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LOLLY 
WILLOWES 


Seer 


OR THE LOVING 
HUNTSMAN 


By 


SYLVIA TOWNSEND 
WARNER 


NEW YORK 
THE VIKING PRESS 


1926 


Printed in the United States of America 


Copyright, 1926, by 
THE VIKING PRESS, INC. 


Published in January, 1926 
Second printing, February, 1926 
Third printing, April, 1926 
Fourth printing, April, 1926 
Fifth printing, April, 1926 


To 
BEA ISABEL HOWE 


os 
maT 
: A 
a 
ee) 
. 
? 


hy 


LOLLY 
WILLOWES 


Part 1. 


HEN her father died, Laura Willowes 
went to live in London with her elder 
brother and his family. 

“Of course,” said Caroline, “you will come 
to us.” 

“But it will upset all your plans. It will 
give you so much trouble. Are you sure you 
really want me?” 

“Oh dear, yes.” 

Caroline spoke affectionately, but her thoughts 
were elsewhere. ‘They had already journeyed 
back to London to buy an eiderdown for the 
bed in the small spare-room. If the washstand 
were moved towards the door, would it be 
possible to fit in a writing-table between it and 
the fireplace? Perhaps a bureau would be bet- 
ter, because of the extra drawers? Yes, that 

I 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


was it. Lolly could bring the little walnut 
bureau with the false handles on one side and 
the top that jumped up when you touched the 
spring by the ink-well. It had belonged to 
Lolly’s mother, and Lolly had always used it, 
so Sibyl could not raise any objections. Sibyl 
had no claim to it whatever, really. She had 
only been married to James for two years, and 
if the bureau had marked the morning-room 
wall-paper, she could easily put something else 
in its place. A stand with ferns and potted 
plants would look very nice. 

Lolly was a gentle creature, and the little 
girls loved her; she would soon fit into her new 
home. ‘The small spare-room would be rather 
a loss. ‘They could not give up the large spare- 
room to Lolly, and the small spare-room was 
the handiest of the two for ordinary visitors. 
It seemed extravagant to wash a pair of the 
large linen sheets for a single guest who came 
but for a couple of nights. Still, there it was, 
and Henry was right—Lolly ought to come to 
them. London would be a pleasant change for 
her. She would meet nice people, and in Lon- 
don she would have a better chance of marry- 
ing. Lolly was twenty-eight. She would 
have to make haste if she were going to find a 

2 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


husband before she was thirty. Poor Lolly! 
black was not becoming to her. She looked 
sallow, and her pale grey eyes were paler and 
more surprising than ever underneath that very 
unbecoming black mushroom hat. Mourning 
was never satisfactory if one a it in a 
country town. 

While these thoughts passed chive Caro- 
line’s mind, Laura was not thinking at all. 
She had picked a red geranium flower, and was 
staining her left wrist with the juice of its 
crushed petals. So, when she was younger, she 
had stained her pale cheeks, and had bent over 
the greenhouse tank to see what she looked like. 
But the greenhouse tank showed only a dark 
shadowy Laura, very dark and smooth like the 
lady in the old holy painting that hung in the 
dining-room and was called the Leonardo. 

“The girls will be delighted,” said Caroline. 
Laura roused herself. It was all settled, then, 
and she was going to live in London with 
Henry, and Caroline his wife, and Fancy and 
Marion his daughters. She would become an 
inmate of the tall house in Apsley Terrace 
where hitherto she had only been a country 
sister-in-law on a visit. She would recognise a 
special something in the physiognomy of that 


3 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


house-front which would enable her to stop cer- 
tainly before it without glancing at the number 
or the door-knocker. Within it, she would 
know unhesitatingly which of the polished 
brown doors was which, and become quite in- 
different to the position of the cistern, which 
had baffled her so one night when she lay awake 
trying to assemble the house inside the box of 
its outer walls. She would take the air in Hyde 
Park and watch the children on their ponies and 
the fashionable trim ladies in Rotten Row, and 
go to the theatre in a cab. 

London life was very full and exciting. 
‘There were the shops, processions of the Royal 
Family and of the unemployed, the gold tunnel 
at Whiteley’s, and the brilliance of the streets by 
night. She thought of the street lamps, so im- 
partial, so imperturbable in their stately dzminu- 
endos, and felt herself abashed before their 
scrutiny. Each in turn would hand her on, 
her and her shadow, as she walked the un- 
fathomed streets and squares—but they would 
be familiar then—complying with the sealed 
orders of the future; and presently she would 
be taking them for granted, as the Londoners 
do. But in London there would be no green- 
house with a glossy tank, and no apple-room, 


4 


LOLLY WILLOWES . 


and no potting-shed, earthy and warm, with 
bunches of poppy heads hanging from the ceil- 
ing, and sunflower seeds in a wooden box, and 
bulbs in thick paper bags, and hanks of tarred 
string, and lavender drying on a tea-tray. She 
must leave all this behind, or only enjoy it as a 
visitor, unless James and Sibyl happened to feel, 
as Henry and Caroline did, that of course she 
must live with them. 

Sibyl said: “Dearest Lolly!’ So Henry and 
Caroline are to have you. . . . We shall miss 
you more than I can say, but of course you will 
prefer London. Dear old London with its pic- 
turesque fogs and its interesting people, and all. 
I quite envy you. But you mustn’t quite for- 
sake Lady Place. You must come and pay us 
long visits, so that Tito doesn’t forget his aunt.” 

“Will you miss me, Tito?” said Laura, and 
‘stooped down to lay her face against his prickly 
bib and his smooth, warm head. ‘Tito fastened 
his hands round her finger. 

“Y’m sure hell miss your ring, Lolly,” said 
Sibyl. ‘“‘You’ll have to cut the rest of your 
teeth on the poor old coral when Auntie Lolly 
goes, won’t you, my angel?” 

“Tl give him the ring if you think he’ll 
really miss it, Sibyl.” 

5 


LOLLY WILLOWES 

Sibyl’s eyes glowed; but she said: 

“Oh no, Lolly, I couldn’t think of taking 
it. Why, it’s a family ring.” 

When Fancy Willowes had grown up, and 
married, and lost her husband in the war, and 
driven a lorry for the Government, and married 
again from patriotic motives, she said to Owen 
Wolf-Saunders, her second husband: 

“How unenterprising women were in the old 
days! Look at Aunt Lolly. Grandfather 
left her five hundred a year, and she was nearly 
thirty when he died, and yet she could find 
nothing better to do than to settle down with 
Mum and Dad, and stay there ever since.” _ 

“The position of single women was very dif- 
ferent twenty years ago,” answered Mr. Wolf- 
Saunders. “Feme sole, you know, and feme 
couverte, and all that sort of rot.” 

Even in 1902 there were some forward 
spirits who wondered why that Miss Willowes, 
who was quite well off, and not likely to marry, 
did not make a home for herself and take up 
something artistic or emancipated. Such pos- 
sibilities did not occur to any of Laura’s rela- 
tions. Her father being dead, they took it for 
granted that she should be absorbed into the 
household of one brother or the other. And 

6 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


Laura, feeling rather as if she were a piece of 
property forgotten in the will, was ready to be 
disposed of. as they should think best. 

The point of view was old-fashioned, but 
the Willoweses were a conservative family and 
kept to old-fashioned ways. Preference, not 
prejudice, made them faithful to their past. 
They slept in beds and sat upon chairs whose 
comfort insensibly persuaded them into respect 
for the good sense of their forbears. Finding 
that well-chosen wood and well-chosen wine 
improved with keeping, they believed that the 
same law applied to well-chosen ways. Moder- 
ation, civil speaking, leisure of the mind and a 
handsome simplicity were canons of behaviour 
imposed upon them by the example of their an- 
cestors. 

Observing those canons, no member of the 
Willowes family had risen to much eminence. 
Perhaps great-great-aunt Salome had made the 
nearest approach to fame. It was a decent 
family boast that great-great-aunt Salome’s 
puff-paste had been commended by King 
George mi. And great-great-aunt Salome’s 
prayer-book, with the services for King Charles 
the Martyr and the Restoration of the Royal 
Family and the welfare of the House of Han- 


7 


LOLLY WILLOWES 

over—a nice example of impartial piety—was 
always used by the wife of the head of the 
family. Salome, though married to a Canon 
of Salisbury, had taken off her embroidered 
kid gloves, turned up her sleeves, and gone into 
the kitchen to mix the paste for His Majesty’s 
eating, her Venice-point lappets dangling above 
the floury bowl. She was a loyal subject, a de- 
vout churchwoman, and a good housewife, and 
the Willoweses were properly proud of her. 
Titus, her father, had made a voyage to the 
Indies, and had brought back with him a green 
parrokeet, the first of its kind to be seen in 
Dorset. ‘The parrokeet was named Ratafee, 
and lived for fifteen years. When he died he 
was stuffed; and perched as in life upon his 
ring, he swung from the cornice of the china- 
cupboard surveying four generations of the Wil- 
lowes family with his glass eyes. Early in the 
nineteenth century one eye fell out and was 
lost. The eye which replaced it was larger, 
but inferior both in lustre and expressiveness. 
This gave Ratafee a rather leering look, but it 
did not compromise the esteem in which he was 
held. In a humble way the bird had made 
county history, and the family acknowledged 
it, and gave him a niche in their own. 


8 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


Beside the china-cupboard and beneath Rata- 
fee stood Emma’s harp, a green harp orna- 
mented with gilt scrolls and acanthus leaves in 
the David manner. When Laura was little she 
would sometimes steal into the empty drawing- 
room and pluck the strings which remained un- 
broken. ‘They answered with a melancholy and 
distracted voice, and Laura would pleasantly 
frighten herself with the thought of Emma’s 
ghost coming back to make music with cold 
fingers, stealing into the empty drawing-room 
as noiselessly as she had done. But Emma’s 
was a gentle ghost. imma had died of a de- 
cline, and when she lay dead with a bunch of 
snowdrops under her folded palms a lock of 
her hair was cut off to be embroidered into a 
picture of a willow tree exhaling its branches 
above a padded white satin tomb. “That,” 
said Laura’s mother, “is an heirloom of your 
great-aunt Emma who died.”” And Laura was 
sorry for the poor young lady who alone, it 
seemed to her, of all her relations had had the 
‘misfortune to die. | 

Henry, born in 1818, grandfather to Laura 
and nephew to Emma, became head of the house 
of Willowes when he was but twenty-four, 
his father and unmarried elder brother dying 


9 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


of smallpox within a fortnight of each other. 
As a young man Henry had shown a roving 
and untraditional temperament, so it was fortu- 
nate that he had the licence of a cadet to go his 
own way. He had taken advantage of this 

freedom to marry a Welsh lady, and to settle — 
near Yeovil, where his father bought him a 
partnership in a brewery. It was natural to 
expect that upon becoming the head of the 
family Henry would abandon, if not the Welsh 
wife and the brewery, at least Somerset, and 
return to his native people. But this he would 
not do. He had become attached to the neigh- 
bourhood where he had spent the first years of 
his married life; the ill-considered jest of his 
uncle the Admiral, that Henry was courting a 
Welsh-woman with a tall hat hike Mother Ship- 
ton’s who would carry her shoes to church, had 
secretly estranged him from his relations; and— 
most weighty reason of all—Lady Place, a 
small solid mansion, which he had leng coveted 
—saying to himself that if ever he were rich 
enough he would make his wife the mistress of 
it—just then came into the market. ‘The 
Willowes obstinacy, which had for so long kept 
unchanged the home of Dorset, was now to 
transfer that home across the county border. 

Io 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


The old house was sold, and the furniture and 
family belongings were installed at Lady Place. 
Several strings of Emma’s harp were broken, — 
some feathers were jolted out of Ratafee’s tail, 
and Mrs. Willowes, whose upbringing had been 
Evangelical, was distressed for several Sundays 
by the goings-on that she found in Salome’s 
prayer-book. But in the main the Willowes 
tradition stood the move very well. ‘The tables 
and chairs and cabinets stood in the same rela- 
tion to each other as before; the pictures hung 
in the same order though on new walls; and 
the Dorset hills were still to be seen from the 
windows, though now from windows facing 
south instead of from windows facing north. 
Even the brewery, untraditional as it was, soon 
weathered and became indistinguishably part of 
the Willowes way of life. 


\ Henry Willowes had three sons and four 
daughters. Everard, the eldest son, married 
his second cousin, Miss Frances D’Urfey. She 
brought some more Willowes property to the 
Somerset house: a set of garnets; a buff and 
gold tea-service bequeathed her by the Admiral, 
an amateur of china, who had dowered all his 
nieces and great-nieces with Worcester, Minton, 


II 
{ 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


and Oriental; and two oil-paintings by Italian 
masters which the younger ‘Titus, Emma’s 
brother, had bought in Rome whilst travelling 
for his health. She bore Everard three chil- 
dren: Henry, born in 1867; James, born in 
1869; and Laura, born in 1874. 

On Henry’s birth Everard laid down twelve 
dozen of port against his coming of age. 
Everard was proud of the brewery, and de- 
clared that beer was the befitting drink for all 
classes of Englishmen, to be preferred over 
foreign wines. But he did not extend this ban 
to port and sherry; it was clarets he partic- 
ularly despised. 

Another twelve dozen of port was laid down 
for James, and there it seemed likely the matter 
would end. 

Everard was a lover of womankind; he 
greatly desired a daughter, and when he got one 
she was all the dearer for coming when he had 
almost given up hope of her. His delight upon 
this occasion, however, could not be so com- 
pactly expressed. He could not lay down port 
for Laura. At last he hit upon the solution of 
his difficulty. Going up to London upon the 
mysterious and inadequate pretext of growing 
bald, he returned with a little string of pearls, 

I2 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


small and evenly matched, which exactly fitted 
the baby’s neck. Year by year, he explained, 
the necklace could be extended until it encircled 
the neck of a grown-up young woman at her 
first ball. The ball, he went on to say, must . 
take place in winter, for he wished to see Laura 
trimmed with ermine. “My dear,” said Mrs. 
Willowes, “‘the poor girl will look like a Beef- 
eater.” But Everard was not to be put off. A 
stuffed ermine which he had known as a boy 
was still his ideal of the enchanted princess, so 
pure and sleek was it, and so artfully poised the 
small neat head on the long throat. ‘‘Weasel!” 
exclaimed his wife. ‘“‘Everard, how dare you 
love a minx?” 

Laura escaped the usual lot of the new-born, 
for she was not at all red. ‘To Everard she 
seemed his very ermine come to true life. He 
was in love with her femininity from the 
moment he set eyes on her. “Oh, the fine 
little lady!” he cried out when she was first 
shown to him, wrapped in shawls, and whim- 
pering at the keen sunlight of a frosty December 
morning. ‘Three days after that it thawed, and 
Mr. Willowes rode to hounds. But he came 
back after the first kill. ‘‘ ’Twas a vixen,” he 
said. “Such a pretty young vixen. It put me 


13 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


in mind of my own, and I thought Id ride 
back to see how she was behaving. Here’s 
the brush.” : 

Laura grew up almost as an only child. By 
the time she was past her babyhood her brothers 
had gone to school. When they came back 
for their holidays, Mrs. Willowes would say: 
“Now, play nicely with Laura. She has fed 
your rabbits every day while you have been at 
school. But don’t let her fall into the pond.” 

Henry and James did their best to observe 
their mother’s bidding. When Laura went too 
near the edge of the pond one or the other would 
generally remember to call her back again; and 
before they returned to the house, Henry, as a 
measure of precaution, would pull a wisp of 
grass and wipe off any tell-tale green slime that 
happened to be on her slippers. But nice play 
with a sister so much younger than themselves 
was scarcely possible. “They performed the 
brotherly office of teaching her to throw and 
to catch; and when they played at Knights or 
Red Indians, Laura was dutifully cast for some 
passive female part. ‘This satisfied the claims 
of honour; if at some later stage it was dis- 
covered that the captive princess or the faithful 
squaw had slipped away unnoticed to the com- 


14 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


pany of Brewer in the coachhouse or Oliver 
Cromwell the toad, who lived under the low 
russet roof of violet leaves near the disused 
melon pit, it did not much affect the course of 
the drama. Once, indeed, when Laura as a 
captive princess had been tied to a tree, her 
brothers were so much carried away by a series 
of single combats for her favour that they for- 
got to come and rescue her before they swore 
friendship and went off to the Holy Land. Mr. 
Willowes, coming home from the brewery 
through a sunset haze of midges, chanced to 
stroll into the orchard to see if the rabbits had 
barked any more of his saplings. ‘There he 
found Laura, sitting contentedly in hayband 
fetters, and singing herself a story about a snake 
that had no mackintosh. Mr. Willowes was 
extremely vexed when he understood from 
Laura’s nonchalant account what had happened. 
He took off her slippers and chafed her feet. 
Then he carried her indoors to his study, giving 
orders that a tumbler of hot sweet lemonade 
should be prepared for her immediately. She 
drank it sitting on his knee while he told her 
about the new ferret. When Henry and James 
were heard approaching with war-whoops, Mr. 
Willowes put her into his leather arm-chair 


15 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


and went out to meet them. ‘Their war- 
whoops quavered and ceased as they caught 
sight of their father’s stern face. Dusk seemed 
to fall on them with condemnation as he re- 
minded them that it was past their supper-time, 
and pointed out that, had he not happened upon 
her, Laura would still have been sitting bound 
to the Bon Chrétien pear-tree. 

This befell upon one of the days when Mrs. 
Willowes was lying down with a headache. 
“Something always goes wrong when I have 
one of my days,” the poor lady would complain. 
It was also upon one of Mrs. Willowes’s days 
that Everard fed Laura with the preserved 
cherries out of the drawing-room cake. Laura 
soon became very sick, and the stable-boy was 
sent off post-haste upon Everard’s mare to sum- 
mon the doctor. 

Mrs. Willowes made a poor recovery after 
Laura’s birth; as time went on, she became more 
and more invalidish, though always pleasantly 
so. She was seldom well enough to entertain, 
so Laura grew up in a quiet household. Ladies 
in mantles of silk or of sealskin, according to 
the season of the year, would come to call, and 
sitting by the sofa would say: ‘Laura is grow- 
ing a big girl now. I suppose before long you 


16 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


will be sending her to a school.” Mrs. Wil- 
lowes heard them with half-shut eyes. Hold- 
ing her head deprecatingly upon one side, she 
returned evasive answers. When by quite shut- 
ting her eyes she had persuaded them to go, she 
would call Laura and say: ‘Darling, aren’t 
your skirts getting a little short?” 

‘Then Nannie would let out another tuck in 
Laura’s ginghams and merinos, and some months 
would pass before the ladies returned to the 
attack. ‘They all liked Mrs. Willowes, but 
they were agreed amongst themselves that she 
needed bracing up to a sense of her responsi- 
bilities, especially her responsibilities about 
Laura. It really was not mght that Laura 
should be left so much to herself. Poor dear 
Miss Taylor was an excellent creature. Had 
she not inquired about peninsulas in all 
the neighbouring school-rooms of consequence? 
But Miss Taylor for three hours daily and 
Mme. Brevet’s dancing classes in winter did not, 
could not, supply all Laura’s needs. She should 
have the companionship of girls of her own age, 
or she might grow up eccentric. Another little 
hint to Mrs. Willowes would surely open the 
poor lady’s eyes. But though Mrs. Willowes 
received their good counsel with a flattering air 


i? 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


of being just about to become impressed by it, 
and filled up their tea-cups with a great deal of 
delicious cream, the silk and sealskin ladies 
hinted in vain, for Laura was still at home when 
her mother died. 

During the last few years of her life Mrs. 
Willowes grew continually more skilled in 
evading responsibilities, and her death seemed 
but the final perfected expression of this skill. 
It was as if she had said, yawning a delicate 
cat’s yawn, “I think I will go to my grave 
now, and had left the room, her white shawl 
trailing behind her. 

Laura mourned for her mother in skirts that 
almost reached the ground, for Miss Boddle, 
the family dressmaker, had nice sensibilities and 
did not think that legs could look sorrowful. 
Indeed, Laura’s legs were very slim and frisky, 
they liked climbing trees and jumping over hay- 
cocks, they had no wish to retire from the 
world and belong to a young lady. But when 
she had put on the new clothes that smelt so 
queerly, and looking in the mirror saw herself 
sad and grown-up, Laura accepted the inevit- 
able. Sooner or later she must be subdued into 
young-ladyhood; and it seemed befitting that 
the change should come gravely, rather than 


18 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


with the conventional polite uproar and fuss of 
“coming-out”—which odd term meant, as far 
as she could see, and when once the champagne 
bottles were emptied and the flimsy ball-dress 
lifted off the thin shoulders, going-in. 

As things were, she had a recompense for 
the loss of her liberty. For Everard needed 
comfort, he needed a woman to comfort him, 
and abetted by Miss Boddle’s insinuations Laura 
was soon able to persuade him that her com- 
fortings were of the legitimate womanly kind. 
It was easy, much easier than she had sup- 
posed, to be grown-up; to be clear-headed and 
watchful, to move sedately and think before 
she spoke. Already her hands .looked much 
whiter on the black lap. She could not take 
her mother’s place—that was as impossible as 
to have her mother’s touch on the piano, for 
Mrs. Willowes had learnt from a former pupil 
of Field, she had the jeu perlé; but she could 
take a place of her own. So Laura behaved 
very well—said the Willowes connection, agree- 
ing and approving amongst themselves—and 
went about her business, and only cried when 
alone in the potting-shed, where a pair of old 
gardening gloves repeated to her the shape of 
her mother’s hands. 


19 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


Her behaviour was the more important in 
that neither of her brothers was at home when 
Mrs. Willowes died. Henry, now a member of 
the Inner Temple, had just proposed marriage 
toa Miss Caroline Fawcett. When he returned 
to London after the funeral it was impossible 
not to feel that he was travelling out of the 
shadow that rested upon Lady Place to bask in 
his private glory of a suitable engagement. 

He left his father and sister to find consola- 
tion in consoling each other. For though 
James was with them, and though his sorrow 
was without qualification, they were not likely 
to get much help from James. He had been in 
Germany studying chemistry, and when they 
sent off the telegram Everard and Laura 
reckoned up how long he would take to reach 
Lady Place, and planned how they could most 
comfortingly receive him, for they had already 
begun to weave a thicker clothing of family 
kindness against the chill of bereavement. On 
hearing the crunch of the wagonette in the drive, 
and the swishing of the wet rhododendrons, they 
glanced at each other reassuringly, taking heart 
at the thought of the bright fire in his bedroom, 
the carefully chosen supper that awaited him. 
But when he stood before them and they looked 

20 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


at his red twitching face, they were abashed 
before the austerity of a grief so differently 
sustained from their own. Nothing they had 
to offer could remedy that heart-ache. ‘They 
left him to himself, and sought refuge in each 
other’s society, as much from his sorrow as 
theirs, and in his company they sat quietly, like 
two good children in the presence of a more 
grown-up grief than they could understand. 
James might have accepted their self-efface- 
ment with silent gratitude; or he might not 
have noticed it at all—it was impossible to tell. 
Soon after his return he did a thing so unprece- 
dented in the annals of the family that it could 
only be explained by the extreme exaltation of 
mind which possessed him: for without con- 
sulting any one, he altered the furniture, trans- 
ferring a mirror and an almond-green brocade 
settee from his mother’s room to hisown. ‘This 
accomplished, he came slowly downstairs and 
went out into the stable-yard where Laura and 
his father were looking at a litter of puppies. 
He told them what he had done, speaking drily, 
as of some everyday occurrence, and when they, 
a little timidly, tried to answer as if they too 
thought it a very natural and convenient ar- 
rangement, he added that he did not intend to 
21 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


go back to Germany, but would stay henceforth 
at Lady Place and help his father with the 
brewery. 

Everard was much pleased at this. His faith 
in the merits of brewing had been rudely jolted 
by the refusal of his eldest son to have anything 
to do with it. Even before Henry left school 
his ambition was set on the law. Hearing him 
speak in the School Debating Society, one of the 
masters told him that he had a legal mind. 
This compliment left him with no doubts as to 
what career he wished to follow, and before 
long the legal mind was brought to bear upon 
his parents. Everard was hurt, and Mrs. 
Willowes was slightly contemptuous, for she 
had the old-fashioned prejudice against the 
learned professions, and thought her son did ill 
in not choosing to live by his industry rather 
than by his wits. But Henry had as much of 
the Willowes determination as either his father 
or his mother, and his stock of it was twenty- 
five years younger and livelier than theirs. 
“Times are changed,” said Everard. “A coun- 
try business doesn’t look the same to a young 
man as it did in my day.” 

So though a partnership in the brewery seemed 
the natural destiny for James, Everard was 

22 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


much flattered by his decision, and hastened to 
put into practice the scientific improvements 
which his son suggested. “Though by nature 
mistrustful of innovations he hoped that James 
might be innocently distracted from his grief 
by these interests, and gave him a new hopper 
in the same paternal spirit as formerly he had 
given him a rook-rifle. James was quite satis- 
fied with the working of the hopper. But it 
was not possible to discover if it had assuaged 
his grief, because he concealed his feelings too 
closely, becoming, by a hyperbole of reticence, 
reserved even about his reserve, so that to all 
appearances he was no more than a red-faced 
young man with a moderate flow of conversa- 
tion. 

Everard and Laura never reached that stage 
of familiarity with James which allows mem- 
bers of the same family to accept each other on 
surface values. ‘Their love for him was tinged 
with awe, the awe that love learns in the mo- 
ment of finding itself unavailing. But they 
were glad to have him with them, especially 
Everard, who was growing old enough to like 
the prospect of easing his responsibilities, even 
the inherent responsibility of being a Willowes, 
on to younger shoulders. No one was better 


23 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


fitted to take up this burden than James. 
Everything about him, from his seat on a horse 
to his taste in leather bindings, betokened an 
integrity of good taste and good sense, un- 
ostentatious, haughty, and discriminating. 

The leather bindings were soon in Laura’s 
hands. New books were just what she wanted, 
for she had almost come to the end of the books 
in the Lady Place library. Had they known 
this the silk and sealskin ladies would have 
shaken their heads over her upbringing even 
more deploringly. But, naturally, it had’ not 
occurred to them that a young lady of their 
acquaintance should be under no restrictions as 
to what she read, and Mrs. Willowes had not 
seen any reason for making them better in- 
formed. 

So Laura read undisturbed, and without dis-. 
turbing anybody, for the conversation at local 
tea-parties and balls never happened to give her 
an opportunity of mentioning anything that she 
had learnt from Locke on the Understanding 
or Glanvil on Witches. In fact, as she was 
generally ignorant of the books which their 
daughters were allowed to read, the neighbour- 
ing mammas considered her rather ignorant. 
However they did not like her any the worse for 


24 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


this, for her ignorance, if not so sexually dis- 
‘pleasing as learning, was of so unsweetened a 
quality as to be wholly without attraction. Nor 
had they any more reason to be dissatisfied with 
her appearance. What beauties of person she 
had were as unsweetened as her beauties of 
mind, and her air of fine breeding made her 
look older than her age. 

Laura was of a middle height, thin, and 
rather pointed. Her skin was brown, inclining 
to sallowness; it seemed browner still by con- 
trast with her eyes, which were large, set wide 
apart, and of that shade of grey which inclines 
neither to blue nor green, but seems only a much 
diluted black. Such eyes are rare in any face, 
and rarer still in conjunction with a brown 
colouring. In Laura’s case the effect was too 
startling to be agreeable. Strangers thought 
her remarkable-looking, but got no further, and 
those more accustomed thought her plain. Only 
Everard and James might have called her pretty, 
had they been asked for an opinion. ‘This 
would not have been only the partiality of one 
Willowes for another. ‘They had seen her at 
home, where animation brought colour into her 
cheeks and spirit into her bearing. Abroad, 
and in company, she was not animated. She 


25 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


disliked going out, she seldom attended any but 
those formal parties at which the attendance of 
Miss Willowes of Lady Place was an obligatory 
civility; and she found there little reason for 
animation. Being without coquetry she did not 
feel herself bound to feign a degree of enter- 
tainment which she had not experienced, and 
the same deficiency made her insensible to the 
duty of every marriageable young woman to be 
charming, whether her charm be directed to- 
wards one special object or, in default of that, 
universally distributed through a disinterested 
love of humanity. This may have been due 
to her upbringing—such was the local explana- 
tion. But her upbringing had only furthered 
a temperamental indifference to the need of 
getting married—or, indeed, of doing anything 
positive—and this indifference was reinforced by 
the circumstances which had made her so closely 
her father’s companion. 

‘There is nothing more endangering to a 
young Wwoman’s normal inclination towards 
young men than an intimacy with a man twice 
her own age. Laura compared with her father 
all the young men whom otherwise she might 
have accepted without any comparisons whatever 
as suitable objects for her intentions, and she did 


26 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


not find them support the comparison at all 
well. They were energetic, good-looking, and 
shot pheasants- with great skill; or they were 
witty, elegantly dressed, and had a London club; 
but still she had no mind to quit her father’s 
company for theirs, even if they should show 
clear signs of desiring her to do so, and till 
then she paid them little attention in thought 
or deed. 

When Aunt Emmy came back from India 
and filled the spare-room with cedar-wood boxes, 
she exclaimed briskly to Everard: “My dear, 
it’s high time Laura married! Why isn’t she 
_ married already?” ‘Then, seeing a slight spasm 
of distress at this barrack-square trenchancy pass 
over her brother’s face, she added: “A girl 
like Laura has only to make her choice. ‘Those 
Welsh eyes. . . . Whenever they look at me 
I am reminded of Mamma. Everard! You 
must let me give her a season in India.” 

“You must ask Laura,” said Everard. And 
they went out into the orchard together, where 
Emmy picked up the windfall apples and ate 
them with the greed of the exile. Nothing 
more was said just then. Emmy was aware of 
her false step. Ashamed at having exceeded a 
Willowes: decorum of intervention she wel- 


27 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


comed this chance to reinstate herself in her 
brother’s good graces by an evocation of their 
childhood under these same trees. 

But Everard kept silence for distress. He 
believed in good faith that his relief at seeing 
Laura’s budding suitors nipped in their bud was 
due to the conviction that not one of them was 
good enough for her. As, innocently as the 
unconcerned Laura might have done, but did 
not, he waited for the ideal wooer. Now 
Emmy’s tactless concern had thrown a cold 
shadow over the remoter future after his death. 
And for the near future had she not spoken of 
taking Laura to India? He would be good. 
He would not say a word to dissuade the girl 
from what might prove to be to her advantage. 
But at the idea of her leaving him for a country 
so distant, for a manner of life so unfamiliar, 
the warmth went out of his days. 

Emmy unfolded her plan to Laura; that is 
to say, unfolded the outer wrappings of it. 
Laura listened with delight to her aunt’s tales 
of Indian life. Compounds and mangoes, the 
early morning rides along the Kilpawk Road, 
the grunting song of the porters who carried 
Mem Sahibs in litters up to the hill-stations, 
parrots flying through the jungle, ayahs with 

28 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


rubies in their nostrils, kid-gloves preserved in 
pickle jars with screw-tops—all the solemn and 
simple pomp of old-fashioned Madras beckoned 
to her, beckoned like the dark arms tinkling 
with bangles of soft gold and coloured glass. 
But when the beckonings took the form of 
Aunt Emmy’s circumstantial invitation Laura 
held back, demurred this way and that, and 
pronounced at last the refusal which had been 
implicit in her mind from the moment the in- 
Vitation was given. 

She did not want to leave her father, nor did 
she want to leave Lady Place. Her life per- 
fectly contented her. She had no wish for ways 
other than those she had grown up in. With 
an easy diligence she played her part as mistress 
of the house, abetted at every turn by country 
servants of long tenure, as enamoured of the 
comfortable amble of day by day as she was. 
At certain seasons a fresh resinous smell would 
haunt the house like some rustic spirit. It was 
Mrs. Bonnet making the traditional beeswax 
polish that alone could be trusted to give the 
proper lustre to the elegantly bulging fronts of 
talboys and cabinets. ‘The grey days of early 
February were tinged with tropical odours by 
great-great-aunt Salome’s recipe for marma- 


29 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


or old Goody Andrews, who might have been 
Nicholas’s crony by the respect she had for the 
moon, were ready to help her out. She roved 
the countryside for herbs and simples, and many 
were the washes and decoctions that she made 
from sweet-gale, water purslane, cowslips, and 
the roots of succory, while her salads gathered 
in fields and hedges were eaten by Everard, at 
first in hope and trust, and afterwards with 
flattering appetite. Encouraged by him, she — 
even wrote a little book called “Health by the 
Wayside” commending the use of old-fashioned 
simples and healing herbs. It was published 
anonymously at the local press, and fell quite 
flat Everard felt much more slighted by this 
than she did, and bought up the remainders 
without telling her so. But mugwort was not 
included in the book, for she was never al- 
lowed to test its virtues, and she would not in- 
clude recipes which she had not tried herself. 
Nannie believed it to be no less effective than 
nettles, but she did not know how to prepare it. 
Once long ago she had made a broth by seeth-- 
ing the leaves in boiling water, which she then 
strained off and gave to Henry and James. But 
it made them both sick, and Mrs. Willowes had 
forbidden its further use. Laura felt positive 


32 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


that mugwort tea would not have made her sick. 
She begged for leave to make trial of it, but to 
no avail; Nannie’s prohibition was as absolute 
as that of her mistress. But Nannie had not 
lost her faith. She explained that the right 
mugwort for the purpose was a very special 
kind that did not grow in Somerset, but at 
the gates of the cobbler in her native village the 
mugwort grew fair enough. Long after this 
discussion had taken place, Laura found in 
Aubrey’s Wiscellany a passage quoted from Pliny 
which told how Artemis had, revealed the virtues 
of mugwort to the dreaming Pericles. She 
hastened to tell Nannie of this. Nannie was 
gratified, but she would not admit that her 
faith needed any buttressing. ‘Those Greeks 
didn’t know everything!” she said, and drove 
a needle into her red cloth emery case, which 
was shaped like a strawberry and spotted over 
with small yellow beads. 

For nearly ten years Laura kept house for 
Everard and James. Nothing happened to dis- 
turb the easy serenity of their days except the 
birth of first one daughter and then another to 
Henry and Caroline, and this did not disturb it 
much. Everard, so happy in a daughter, was 
prepared to be happy in granddaughters also. 


Oe 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


or old Goody Andrews, who might have been 
Nicholas’s crony by the respect she had for the 
moon, were ready to help her out. She roved 
the countryside for herbs and simples, and many 
were the washes and decoctions that she made 
from sweet-gale, water purslane, cowslips, and 
the roots of succory, while her salads gathered 
in fields and hedges were eaten by Everard, at 
first in hope and trust, and afterwards with 
flattering appetite. Encouraged by him, she — 
even wrote a little book called “Health by the 
Wayside” commending the use of old-fashioned 
simples and healing herbs. It was published 
anonymously at the local press, and fell quite 
flat. Everard felt much more slighted by this 
than she did, and bought up the remainders 
without telling her so. But mugwort was not 
included in the book, for she was never al- 
lowed to test its virtues, and she would not in- 
clude recipes which she had not tried herself. 
Nannie believed it to be no less effective than 
nettles, but she did not know how to prepare it. 
Once long ago she had made a broth by seeth- 
ing the leaves in boiling water, which she then 
strained off and gave to Henry and James. But 
it made them both sick, and Mrs. Willowes had 
forbidden its further use. Laura felt positive 


32 


POLLY WILLOWES 


that mugwort tea would not have made her sick. 
She begged for leave to make trial of it, but to 
no avail; Nannie’s prohibition was as absolute 
as that of her mistress. But Nannie had not 
lost her faith. She explained that the right 
mugwort for the purpose was a very special 
kind that did not grow in Somerset, but at 
the gates of the cobbler in her native village the 
mugwort grew fair enough. Long after this 
discussion had taken place, Laura found in 
Aubrey’s Miscellany a passage quoted from Pliny 
which told how Artemis had, revealed the virtues 
of mugwort to the dreaming Pericles. She 
hastened to tell Nannie of this. Nannie was 
gratified, but she would not admit that her 
faith needed any buttressing. ‘“Those Greeks 
didn’t know everything!” she said, and drove 
a needle into her red cloth emery case, which 
was shaped like a strawberry and spotted over 
with small yellow beads. 

For nearly ten years Laura kept house for 
Everard and James. Nothing happened to dis- 
turb the easy serenity of their days except the 
birth of first one daughter and then another to 
Henry and Caroline, and this did not disturb it 
much. Everard, so happy in a daughter, was 
prepared to be happy in granddaughters also. 


33 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


When Henry apologised to him with dignity 
for the accident of their sex Everard quoted to 
him the nursery rhyme about what little boys 
and girls were made of. Henry was relieved to 
find his father taking so lightly a possible failure 
in the Willowes male line, but he wished the 
old man wouldn’t trifle so. He could not stoop 
to give his father the lie over his unscientific 
theory of sex. He observed gloomily that 
daughters could be very expensive now that so 
much fuss was being made about the education 
of women. 

Henry in his fears for the Willowes male 
line had taken it for granted that his brother 
would’ never marry. And certainly if to he 
very low about a thing is a sign that one is not 
thinking about it, James had no thought of 
marriage. He was nearly thirty-three when he 
announced with his usual quiet abruptness that 
he was going to marry. ‘The lady of his choice 
was a Miss Sibyl Mauleverer. She was the 
daughter of a clergyman, but of a fashionable 
London clergyman which no doubt accounted 
for her not being in the least like any clergy- 
man’s daughter seen by Everard and Laura 
hitherto. Miss Mauleverer’s skirts were so long 


34 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


and so lavish that they lay in folds upon the 
ground all round her when she stood still, and 
required to be lifted in both hands before she 
could walk. Her hats were further off her 
head than any hats that had yet been seen in 
Somerset, and she had one of the up-to-date 
smooth Aberdeen terriers. It was indeed hard 
to believe that this distinguished creature had 
been born and bred in a parish. But nothing 
could have been more parochial than her deter- 
mination to love her new relations and to be 
loved in return. She called Everard Vaterlein, 
she taught Laura to dance the cake-walk, she 
taught Mrs. Bonnet to make petits canapés a 
PImpératrice; having failed to teach Brewer 
how to make a rock’garden, she talked of mak- 
ing one herself; and though she would have 
liked old oak better, she professed herself en- 
chanted by the Willowes walnut and mahogany. 
So assiduously did this pretty young person seek 
to please that Laura and Everard would have 
been churlish had they not responded to her 
blandishments. Each, indeed, secretly won- 
dered what James could see in any one so showy 
and dashing as Sibyl. But they were too dis- 
creet to admit this, even one to the other, and 


35 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


contented themselves with politely wondering 
what Sibyl could see in such a country sobersides 
as James, | 

Lady Place was a large house, and it seemed 
proper that James should bring his wife to live 
there. It also seemed proper that she should 
take Laura’s place as mistress of the household. 
The sisters-in-law disputed this point with much 
civility, each insisting upon the other’s claim 
like two queens curtseying in a doorway. How- 
ever Sibyl was the visiting queen and had to 
yield to Laura in civility, and assume the re- 
sponsibilities of housekeeping. She jingled them 
very lightly, and as soon as she found herself 
to be with child she gave them over again to 
Laura, who made a point of ordering the petits 
canapés whenever any one came to dinner. 

Whatever small doubts and regrets Everard 
and Laura had nursed about James’s wife were 
put away when Sibyl bore a man child. It 
would not have been loyal to the heir of the 
Willowes to suppose that his mother was not 
quite as well-bred as he. Everard did not even — 
need to remind himself of the Duchess of 
Suffolk. Titus, sprawling his fat hands over 
his mother’s bosom, Titus, a disembodied cooing 
of contentment in the nursery overhead, would 


26 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


have justified a far more questionable match 
than James had made. 

A year later Everard, amid solemnity, lit the 
solitary candle of his grandson’s first birthday 
upon the cake that Mrs. Bonnet had made, that 
Laura had iced, that Sibyl had*wreathed with 
flowers. The flame wavered a little in the 
draught, and Everard, careful against omens, 
ordered the French windows to be shut. On 
so glowing a September afternoon it was strange 
to see the conifers nodding their heads in the 
wind and to hear the harsh breath*of autumn go 
forebodingly round the house. Laura gazed at 
the candle. She understood her father’s alarm 
and, superstitious also, held her breath until she 
saw the flame straighten itself and the first 
little trickle of coloured wax flow down upon 
the glittering tin star that held the candle. 
That evening, after dinner, there was a show of 
fireworks for the school children in the garden. 
So many rockets were let off by Everard and 
James that for a while the northern sky was 
laced with a thicket of bright sedge scattering 
a fiery pollen. So hot and excited did Everard 
become in manceuvring this splendour that he 
forgot the cold wind and took off his coat. 

‘Two days after he complained of a pain in 


37 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


his side. ‘The doctor looked grave as he came 
out of the bed-chamber, though within it Laura 
had heard him laughing with his old friend, and 
rallying him upon his nightcap. Everard had 
inflammation of the lungs, he told her; he 
would send for two nurses. ‘They came, and 
their starched white aprons looked to her lke 
unlettered tombstones. From the beginning her 
soul had crouched in apprehension, and indeed 
there was at no time much hope for the old 
man. When he was conscious he lay very 
peacefully, his face turned towards the window, 
watching the swallows fly restlessly from tree to 
tree. “It will be a hard winter,” he said to 
Laura. “They’re gathering early to go.” And 
then: “Do you suppose they know where 
they’re going?” 

“Y’m sure they do,” she answered, thinking ; 
to comfort him. He regarded her shrewdly, 
smiled, and shook his head. “Then they’re 
wiser than we.” 

When grandfather Henry, that masterful 
man, removed across the border, he was fol- 
lowed by a patriarchal train of manservants and 
miaidservants, mares, geldings, and spaniels, vans 
full of household stuff, and slow country wag- 
gons loaded with nodding greenery. “I want 


38 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


to make sure of a good eating apple,” said he, 
“since I am going to Lady Place for life.” 
Death was another matter. The Willowes 
burial-ground was in Dorset, nor would Henry 
lie elsewhere. Now it was Everard’s turn. 
‘The dead appeared to welcome him without 
astonishment—the former Everards and Tituses, 
Lauras and Emmelines; they were sure that he 
would come, they approved his decision to join 
them. 

Laura stood by the open grave, but the heap 
of raw earth and the planks sprawling upon it 
displeased her. Her eyes strayed to the graves 
that were completed. Her mind told the tale 
of them, for she knew them well. Four times 
a year Mrs. Willowes had visited the family 
burying place, and as a child Laura had counted. 
it a solemn and delicious honour to accompany 
her upon these expeditions. In summer especi- 
ally, it was pleasant to sit on the churchyard 
wall under the thick roof of lime trees, or to 
finger the headstones, now hot, now cold, while 
her mother went from grave to grave with her 
gauntlet gloves and her gardening basket. 
Afterwards they would eat their sandwiches in 
a hayfield, and pay a visit to old Mrs. Dymond, 
whose sons and grandsons in hereditary office 


39 


~ 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


clipped the grass and trimmed the bushes of the 
family enclosure. As Laura grew older the 
active part of these excursions fell upon her; 
and often of late years when she went alone she 
half yielded her mind to the fancy that the 
dead mother whose grave she tended was sitting 
a little apart in the shade, presently to rise and 
come to meet her, having just recalled and 
delicately elaborated some odd trait of a neigh- 
bouring great-uncle. 

‘The bees droned in the motionless lime trees. 
A hot ginny churchyard smell detached itself 
in a leisurely way from the evergreens when 
the mourners brushed by them. ‘The sun, but 
an hour or so declined, shone with an ardent 
and steadfast interest upon the little group. “In 
the midst of life we are in death,” said Mr. 
Warbury, his voice sounding rather shameless 
taken out of church and displayed upon the 
basking echoless air. “In the midst of death 
we are in life,” Laura thought, would be a more 
accurate expression of the moment. Her small 
body encased in tremendous sunlight seemed to 
throb with an intense vitality, impersonally re- 
sponding to heat, scent, and colour. With blind 
clear-sighted eyes she saw the coffin lowered 
into the grave, and the earth shovelled in on 


40 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


top of it. She was aware of movement around 
her, of a loosening texture of onlookers, of foot- 
steps and departures. But it did not occur te 
her that the time was come when she too must 
depart. She stood and watched the sexton, who 
had set to work now in a more business-like 
fashion. An arm was put through hers. A 
voice said: ‘Dear Laura! we must go now,” 
and Caroline led her away. ‘Tears ran down 
Caroline’s face; she seemed to be weeping be- 
cause it was time to go. 

_ Laura would have turned for one more back- 
ward look, but Caroline prevented her. Her 
tears ran faster and she shook her head and 
sighed. They reached the gate. It closed be- 
hind them with a contented click, for they were 
the last to leave. 

Opposite the churchyard were the gates. of 
the old home. ‘The drive was long, straight, 
and formal; it had been a cart-track across 4 
meadow when the old home was a farm. At 
the end of the drive stood the grey stone house. 
A purple clematis muffled the porch, and a 
white cat lay asleep in a bed of nasturtiums. 
The blinds were drawn down in respect to the 
dead. Laura looked at it. Since her earliest 
childhood it had been a familiar sight, a familiar 


41 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


thought. But now she saw it with different 
eyes: a prescience of exile came over her and, 
forgetting Lady Place, she looked with the 
yearning of an outcast at the dwelling so long 
ago discarded. The house was like an old 
blind nurse sitting in the sun and ruminating 
past events. It seemed an act of the most 
horrible ingratitude to leave it all and go away 
without one word of love. But the gates were 
shut, the time of welcome was gone by. 

For a while they stood in the road, none 
making a move, each waiting for the other’s 
lead. A tall poplar grew on the left hand of 
the churchyard gate. Its scant shadow scarcely 
indented the white surface of the road. A> 
quantity of wasps were buzzing about its trunk, 
and presently one of the wasps stung Henry. 
‘This seemed to be the spur that they were all 
waiting for; they turned and walked to the 
corner of the road where the carriages stood 
that were to drive them back to the station. 

Every one was sorry for Laura, for they knew 
how much she had loved her father. They 
agreed that it was a good thing that Henry and 
Caroline were taking her to London. ‘They 
hoped that this change would distract her from 
her grief. Meanwhile, there was a good deal 


42 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


to do, and that also was a distraction. Clothes 
and belongings had to be sorted out, friends and 
family pensioners visited, and letters of con-- 
dolence answered. Beside this she had her own 
personal accumulation of vagrant odds and ends 
to dispose of. She had lived for twenty-eight 
years in a house where there was no lack of 
cupboard room, and a tradition of hoarding, 
so the accumulation was considerable. ‘There 
were old toys, letters, stones of strange shapes 
or bright colours, lesson-books, water-colour 
sketches of the dogs and the garden; a bunch 
of dance programmes kept for the sake of their 
little pencils, and all the little pencils tangled 
into an inextricable knot; pieces of unfinished 
needlework, jeweller’s boxes, scraps cut out of 
the newspaper, and unexplainable objects that 
could only be remembrancers of things she had 
forgotten. ‘To go over these hoards amused the 
surface of her mind. But with everything 
thrown away she seemed to be denying the 
significance of her youth. 

‘Thus busied, she was withheld all day from 
her proper care. But at dusk she would go 
out of the house and pace up and down the nut 
alley at the foot of the garden. ‘The cold airs 
that rose up from the ground spoke sadly to 


43 


LOLLY WILLOWES 

her of burial, the mossy paths were hushed and 
humble under her tread, and the smells of 
autumn condoled with her. Brewer the gar- 
dener, stamping out the ashes of his bonfire, 
saw her pass to and fro, a slender figure moving 
sedately between the unmoving boughs. He 
alone of all the household had taken his master’s 
death without exclamation. Death coming to 
the old was a harmless thought to him, but 
looking at Laura he sighed deeply, as though 
he had planted her and now saw her dashed 
and broken by bad weather. 

Ten days after Everard’s death Henry and 
Caroline left Lady Place, taking Laura with 
them. She found the leave-taking less painful 
than she had expected, and Caroline put her to 
bed as soon as they arrived in Apsley Terrace, 
which simplified her unhappiness by making her 
feel like an unhappy child. 

Laura had heard the others agreeing that the 
move to London would make her feel very 
differently. She had thought them stupid to 
suppose that any outward change could alter 
her mood. She now found that they had judged 
better than she. In Somerset she had grieved 
over her father’s death. In London her grief 
was retracted into sudden realisations of her 


44 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


loss. She had thought that sorrow would be 
her companion for many years, and had planned 
for its entertainment. Now it visited her like 
sudden snow-storms, a hastening darkness across 
the sky, a transient whiteness and rigour cast 
upon her. She tried to recover the sentiment 
of renunciation which she had worn like a veil. 
It was gone, and gone with it was her sense of 
the dignity of bereavement. 

Henry and Caroline did all they could to 
prevent her feeling unhappy. If they had been 
overlooking some shame of hers they could not 
have been more tactful, more modulatory. 

The first winter passed by like a half-frozen 
stream. At the turn of the year it grew ex- 
tremely cold. Red cotton sandbags were laid 
along the window-sashes, and Fancy and Marion 
skated on the Round Pond with small astrakhan 
mufis. Laura did not skate, but she walked 
briskly along the path with Caroline, listening 
to the rock and jar of the skates grinding upon 
the ice and to the cries of the gulls overhead. 
She found London much colder than the coun- 
try, though Henry assured her that this was im- 
possible. She developed chilblains, and this 
annoyed her, for she had not had chilblains since 
she was a child. Then Nannie Quantrell 


45 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


would send her out in the early morning to run 
barefoot over the rimy lawn. ‘There was a 
small garden at Apsley Terrace, but it had been 
gravelled over because Henry disliked the quality 
of London grass; and in any case it was not the 
sort of garden in which she could run barefoot. 

She was also annoyed by the hardness of the 
London water. Her hands were so thin that 
they were always a little red; now they were 
rough also. If they could have remained idle, 
she would not have minded this so much. But 
Caroline never sat with idle hands; she would 
knit, or darn, or do useful needlework. Laura 
could not sit opposite her and do nothing. 
There was no useful needlework for her to do, 
Caroline did it all, so Laura was driven to 
embroidery. Each time that a strand of silk 
rasped against her fingers she shuddered in- 
wardly. 

‘Time went faster than the embroidery did. 
She had actually a sensation that she was stitch- 
ing herself into a piece of embroidery with a 
good deal of background. But, as Caroline 
said, it was not possible to feel dull when there 
was so much to do. Indeed, it was surprising 
how much there was to do, and for everybody 
in the house. Even Laura, introduced as a sort 


46 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


of extra wheel, soon found herself part of the 
mechanism, and, interworking with the other 
wheels, went round as busily as they. 

When she awoke, the day was already begun. 
She could hear iron noises from the kitchen, 
the sound of yesterday’s ashes being probed 
out. Then came a smell of wood smoke— 
the kitchen fire had been laid anew and kindled 
in the cleansed grate. ‘This was followed by 
the automatic noise of the carpet-sweeper and, 
breaking in upon it, the irregular knocking of 
the staircase brush against the banisters. “The 
maid who brought her morning tea and laid the 
folded towel across the hot-water can had an 
experienced look; when she drew back the cur- 
tains she looked out upon the day with no 
curiosity. She had seen it already. 

By the time the Willowes family met at 
breakfast all this activity had disappeared like 
the tide from the smooth, garnished beach. For 
the rest of the day it functioned unnoticed. 
Bells were answered, meals were served, all that 
appeared was completion. Yet unseen and un- 
derground the preparation and demolition of 
every day went on, like the inward persistent 
workings of heart and entrails. Sometimes a 
crash, a banging door, a voice upraised, would 


47 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


rend the veil of impersonality. And some- 
times a sound of running water at unusual hours 
and a faint steaminess in the upper parts of the 
house betokened that one of the servants was 
having a bath. 

After breakfast, and after Henry had been 
seen off, Caroline descended to the kitchen and 
Laura read the relinquished Times. ‘Then 
came shopping, letter-writing, arranging the 
flowers, cleaning the canary-cage, and the girls’ 
walk. Such things as arranging flowers or 
cleaning the canary-cage were done with a kind 
of precautious routine which made them seem 
alike solemn and illicit. The flowers were 
always arranged in the ground-floor lavatory, 
where there was a small sink; vases and wire 
frames were kept in a cupboard, and a pair of 
scissors was strung to a nail. ‘Then the com- 
pleted affair was carried carefully past the coats 
that hung in the lobby outside and set down upon 
some established site. 

Every Tuesday the books were changed at 
the library. 

After lunch there was a spell of embroidery 
and more Times. If it was fine, Caroline paid 
calls; if wet, she sat at home on the chance of 
receiving them. On Saturday afternoons there 


48 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


was the girls’ dancing-class. Laura accompa- 
nied her nieces thither, carrying their slippers in 
a bag. She sat among the other parents and 
guardians upon a dais which shook to the 
primary accents of the pianist, watching lancers 
and polkas and waltzes being performed, and 
hearing Miss Parley say: ‘Now we will re-. 
commence.” After the dancing was over there 
was a March of Grace, and when Fancy and 
Marion had miscarried of their curtseys she 
would envelop their muslin dresses and their 
red elbows in the grey ulsters, and walk them 
briskly home again. 

‘They were dull children, though their dull- 
ness did not prevent them having a penetrating 
flow of conversation. ‘Their ways and thoughts 
were governed by a sort of zodiacal procession 
of other little girls, and when they came down 
to the drawing-room after tea it seemed to 
Laura that they brought the Wardours, or the 
Wilkinsons, or the de la Bottes with them. 

Dinner was at half-past seven. It was a 
sensible rule of Caroline’s that at dinner only 
general topics should be discussed. The diffi- 
culties of the day (if the day had presented 
difficulties) were laid aside. ‘To this rule 
Caroline attributed the excellence of Henry’s 


49 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


digestion. Henry’s digestion was further safe- 
guarded by being left to itself in the smoking- 
room for an hour after dinner. If he was 
busy, this hour of meditation would be followed 
by some law-work. If not, he would join 
them in the drawing-room, or go to his club. 
When they were thus left by themselves Laura 
and Caroline went off to bed early, for they 
were pleasantly fatigued by their regular days 
and regular meals. Later on Laura, half 
asleep, would hear Henry’s return from his 
club. The thud of the front door pulled to 
after him drove through the silent house, and 
this was followed by the noise of bolts and 
chains. ‘Then the house, emptied of another 
day, creaked once or twice, and fell into repose, 
its silence and security barred up within it like 
a kind of moral family plate. The remainder 
of the night was left at the disposal of the 
grandfather’s clock in the hall, equitably deal- 
ing out minutes and quarters and hours. 

On Sunday mornings Henry would wind the 
clock. First one and then the other the quiv- 
ering chains were wound up, till only the snouts 
of the leaden weights were visible, drooping 
sullenly over the abyss of time wherein they 
were to make their descent during the seven 


50 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


days following. After that the family went to 
church, and there were wound up for the week - 
in much the same manner. They went to 
evening service too, but evening service was 
less austere. The vindictive sentiments sounded 
less vindictive; if an umbrella fell down with a 
crash the ensuing silence was less affronted; the 
sermon was shorter, or seemed so, and swung 
more robustly into “And now to God the Fa- 
ther.” 

After evening service came cold supper. 
Fancy and Marion sat up for this, and it was 
rather a cheerful meal, with extra trivialities 
such as sardines and celery. ‘The leaden 
weights had already started upon their down- 
ward course. | 

Caroline was a religious woman. Resolute, 
orderly and unromantic, she would have made 
an admirable Mother Superior. In her house- 
keeping and her scrupulous account-books she 
expressed an almost mystical sense of the valid- 
ity of small things. But like most true mys- 
tics, she was unsympathetic and difficult of ap- 
proach. Once only did she speak her spiritual 
mind to Laura. Laura was nursing her when 
she had influenza; Caroline wished to put on a 
clean nightdress, and Laura, opening the third 


5I 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


drawer of the large mahogany wardrobe, had 
commented upon the beautiful orderliness with 
which Caroline’s body linen was arranged 
therein. “We have our example,” said Caro- 
line. “The graveclothes were folded in the 
tomb.” 

Looking into the large shadowy. drawer, 
where nightgowns and chemises lay folded 
exactly upon each other in a purity that dis- 
dained even lavender, Laura shuddered a little 
at this revelation of her sister-in-law’s private 
thoughts. She made no answer, and never 
again did Caroline open her mind to her upon 
such matters. 

Laura never forgot. this. Caroline seemed 
affectionately disposed towards her; she was 
full of practical good sense, her advice was 
excellent, and pleasantly bestowed. Laura saw 
her a good wife, a fond and discreet mother, a 
kind mistress, a most conscientious sister-in-law. 
She was also rather gluttonous. But for none 
of these qualities could Laura feel at ease with 
her. Compared to Caroline she knew herself 
to be unpractical, unmethodical, lacking in ini- 
tiative. ‘The tasks that Caroline delegated to 
her she performed eagerly and carefully, but 
she performed them with the hampering con- 


52 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


sciousness that Caroline could do them better 
than she, and in less time. Even in so simple 
a matter as holding a skein of wool for Caroline 
to wind off into a ball, Caroline’s large white 
fingers worked so swiftly that it was she who 
twitched the next length off Laura’s thumb 
before Laura, watching the diminishing thread, 
remembered to dip her hand. But all this— 
for Laura was humble and Caroline kind— 
could have been overcome. It was in the things 
that never appeared that Laura felt her inade- 
quacy. 

Laura was not in any way religious. She 
was not even religious enough to speculate to- 
wards irreligion. She went with Caroline to 
early service whenever Caroline’s inquiries sug- 
gested it, and to morning service and evening 
service every Sunday; she knelt beside her and 
heard her pray in a small, stilled version of the 
voice which she knew so well in its clear every- 
day ordinances. Religion was great-great-aunt 
Salome’s prayer-book which Caroline held in 
her gloved hands. Religion was a strand in 
the Willowes life, and the prayer-book was the 
outward sign of it. But it was also the outward 
sign of the puff pastry which had been praised 
by. King George mi. Religion was something 


53 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


to be preserved: it was part of the Willowes 
life and so was the prayer-book, preserved from 
generation to generation. 

Laura was bored by the church which they 
attended. She would have liked, now that she 
was come to London, to see the world, to ad- 
venture in churches. She was darkly, adven- 
turously drawn to see what services were like 
amongst Roman Catholics, amongst Huguenots, 
amongst Unitarians and Swedenborgians, feel- 
ing about this rather as she felt about the East 
End. She expressed her wish to Caroline, and 
Caroline, rather unexpectedly, had been in- 
clined to further it. But Henry banned the 
project. It would not do for Laura to go else- 
where than to the family place of worship, he 
said. For Henry, the family place of worship 
was the pew upon whose ledge rested great- 
great-aunt Salome’s prayer-book. He felt this 
less explicitly than the straying Laura did, for 
he was a man and had less time to think of such 
things. But he felt it strongly. 

Laura believed that she would like Caroline 
if she could only understand her. She had no 
difficulty in understanding Henry, but for no 
amount of understanding could she much like 
him. After some years in his house she came 


54 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


to the conclusion that Caroline had been very 
bad for his character. Caroline was a good 
woman and a good wife. She was slightly 
self-righteous, and fairly rightly so, but she 
yielded to Henry’s judgment in every dispute, 
she bowed her good sense to his will and blink- 
ered her wider views in obedience to his preju- 
dices. Henry had a high opinion of her merits, 
but thinking her to be so admirable and finding 
her to be so acquiescent had encouraged him to 
have an even higher opinion of his own. 
However good a wife Caroline might choose to 
be she could not quite make Henry a bad hus- 
band or a bad man-—he was too much of a 
Willowes for that: but she fed his vanity, and 
ministered to his imperiousness. 

Laura also thought that the law had done a 
great deal to spoil Henry. It had changed his 
natural sturdy stupidity into a browbeating in- 
difference to other people’s point of view. He 
seemed to consider himself briefed by his Cre- 
ator to turn into ridicule the opinions of those 
who disagreed with him, and to attribute dis- 
honesty, idiocy, or a base motive to every one 
who supported a better case than he. ‘This did 
not often appear in his private life, Henry was 
kindly disposed to those who did not thwart 


55 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


him by word or deed. His household had been 
well schooled by Caroline in yielding grace- 
fully, and she was careful not to invite guests 
who were not of her husband’s way of thinking. 

Most of their acquaintance were people con- 
nected with the law. Laura grew familiar 
with the legal manner, but she did not grow 
fond of it. She felt that these clean-shaven 
men with bristling eyebrows were suavely con- 
cealing their doubts of her intelligence and her 
probity. Their jaws were like so many mouse- 
traps, baited with commonplaces. ‘They made 
her feel shy and behave stiffly. 

This was unfortunate, as Henry and Caro- 
line had hoped that some one of them would 
fall sufficiently in love with Laura to marry 
her. Mr. Fortescue, Mr. Parker, Mr. Jermyn, 
Mr. Danby, Mr. Thrush, were in turn selected 
as suitable and likely undertakers. Every de- 
cent effort was made by Henry and Caroline, 
and a certain number of efforts were made by 
the chosen. But Laura would make no efforts 
at all. Henry and Caroline had lost heart 
when they invited Mr. Arbuthnot to tea on 
Sunday. ‘They invited him for pity’s sake, and 
but to tea at that, for he was very shy and 
stammered. To their surprise they saw Laura 


56 


LOLLY WILLOWES 

taking special pains to be nice to him. Equally 
to their surprise they saw Mr. Arbuthnot laying 
aside his special pains to observe a legal manner 
and stammering away quite enthusiastically 
about climbing Welsh mountains and gathering 
parsley fern. ‘They scarcely dared to hope, for 
they felt the time for hope was gone by. 
However, they invited him to dinner, and did 
their best to be on friendly terms with him. 

Mr. Arbuthnot received their advances with- 
out surprise, for he had a very good opinion of 
himself. He felt that being thirty-five he 
owed himself a wife, and he also felt that 
Laura would do very nicely. His aunt, Lady 
Ross-Price, always tried to get servants from 
the Willowes establishment, for Mrs. Willowes 
trained them so well. Mr. Arbuthnot sup- 
posed that Mrs. Willowes would be equally 
good at training wives. He began to think of 
Laura quite tenderly, and Caroline began to 
read the Stores’ catalogue quite seriously. ‘This 
was the moment when Laura, who had been be- 
having nicely for years, chose to indulge her 
fantasy, and to wreck in five minutes the good 
intentions of as many months. 

She had come more and more to look on Mr. 
Arbuthnot as an indulgence. His stammer had 


57 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


endeared him to her; it seemed, after so much 
legal manner, quite sympathetic. ‘Though 
nothing would have induced her to marry him, 
she was very ready to talk to him, and even to 
talk naturally of what came uppermost in her 
thoughts. Laura’s thoughts ranged over a wide 
field, even now. Sometimes she said rather 
amusing things, and displayed unexpected stores 
(General Stores) of knowledge. But her re- 
marks were as a rule so disconnected from the 
conversation that no one paid much attention to 
them. Mr. Arbuthnot certainly was not pre- 
pared for her response to his statement that 
February was a dangerous month. “It is,” an- 
swered Laura with almost violent agreement. 
“If you are a were-wolf, and very likely you 
may be, for lots of people are without knowing, 
February, of all months, is the month when you 
are most likely to go out on a dark windy night 
and worry sheep.” 

Henry and Caroline glanced at each other 
in horror. Mr. Arbuthnot said: ‘How very 
interesting! But I really don’t think I am > 
likely to do such a thing.” Laura made no 
answer. She did not think so either. But she 
was amusing herself with a surprisingly vivid 
and terrible picture of Mr. Arbuthnot cloaked 

58 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


in a shaggy hide and going with heavy devour- 
ing swiftness upon all-fours with a lamb 
dangling from his mouth. 

This settled it. Henry and Caroline made 
no more attempts to marry off Laura. ‘Trying 
to do so had been a nuisance and an expense, 
and Laura had never shown the smallest appre- 
ciation of their trouble. Before long they 
would have the girls to think of. Fancy was 
sixteen, and Marion nearly as tall as Fancy. 
In two years they would have to begin again. 
They were glad of a respite, and made the most 
of it. Laura also was glad of a respite. She 
bought second-hand copies of Herodotus and 
Johnson’s Dictionary to read in the evenings. 
Caroline, still sewing on buttons, would look at 
her sister-in-law’s composed profile. Laura’s 
hair was black as ever, but it was not so thick. 
She had grown paler from living in London. 
Her forehead had not a wrinkle, but two down- 
ward lines prolonged the drooping corners of 
her mouth. Her face was beginning to stiffen. 
It had lost its power of expressiveness, and was 
more and more dominated by the hook nose and 
the sharp chin. When Laura was ten years 
older she would be nut-crackerish. 

Caroline resigned herself to spending the 


Bie, 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


rest of her evenings with Laura beside her. 
The perpetual company of a sister-in-law was 
rather more than she had bargained for. Still, 
there she was, and Henry was right—they had 
been the proper people to make a home for 
Laura when her father died, and she was 
too old now to begin living by herself. It 
was not as if she had had any experience of 
life; she .had passed from one guardianship 
to another: it was impossible to imagine Laura 
fending for herself. A kind of pity for the 
unused virgin beside her spread through Caro- 
line’s thoughts. She did not attach an in- 
ordinate value to her wifehood and maternity; 
they were her duties, rather than her glories. 
But for all that she felt emotionally plumper 
than Laura. It was well to be loved, to be 
necessary to other people. But Laura too was 
loved, and Laura was necessary. Caroline did 
not know what the children would do without 
their Aunt Lolly. 

Every one spoke of her as Aunt Lolly, till 
in the course of time she had almost forgotten’ 
her baptismal name. 

“Say How-do to Auntie Laura,” said Caro- 
line to Fancy. ‘This was long ago in the re- 
furbished nursery at Lady Place when Laura 

60 


3 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


knelt timidly before her first niece, while the 
London nurse bustled round them unpacking 
soft hair-brushes and pots of cold cream, and 
hanging linen to air upon the tall nursery 
fender. 

“How-do, Auntie Lolly,” said Fancy, gra- 

ciously thrusting forward a fur monkey. 
_ “She’s taken to you at once, Laura,” said 
Caroline. “I was afraid this journey would 
upset her, but she’s borne it better than any 
of us.” 

“Journeys are nothing to them at that age, 
ma’am,” said the nurse. ‘“‘Now suppose you 
tell your new auntie what you call Monkey.” 

“Auntie Lolly, Auntie Lolly,’ repeated 
Fancy, rhythmically banging the monkey against 
the table-leg. 

The name hit upon by Fancy was accepted 
by Marion and Titus; before long their parents 
made use of it also. Everard never spoke of 
his daughter but as Laura, even when he spoke 
of her to his grandchildren. He was too old 
to change his ways, and he had, in any case, a 
prejudice against nicknames and abbreviations. 
But when Laura went to London she left Laura 
behind, and entered into a state of Aunt Lolly. 
She had quitted so much of herself in quitting 

61 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


Somerset that it seemed natural to relinquish 
her name also. Divested of her easily-worn 
honours as mistress of the household, shorn of 
her long meandering country days, sleeping in a 
smart brass bedstead instead of her old and rather 
pompous four-poster, wearing unaccustomed 
clothes and performing unaccustomed duties, 
she seemed to herself to have become a different 
person. Or rather, she had become two per- 
sons, each different. One was Aunt Lolly, a 
middle-aging lady, light-footed upon stairs, and 
indispensable for Christmas Eve and birthday 
preparations. ‘The other was Miss Willowes, 
“my sister-in-law Miss Willowes,” whom Car- 
oline would introduce, and abandon to a feel- 
ing of being neither light-footed nor indis-— 
* pensable. But Laura was put away. When 
Henry asked her to witness some document for 
him her Laura Erminia Willowes seemed as 
much a thing out of common speech as the 
Spinster that followed it. She would look, and 
be surprised that such a dignified name should 
belong to her. 

‘Twice a year, in spring and in summer, the 
Willowes family went into the country for a 
holiday. For the first three years of Laura’s 
London life they went as a matter of course 


62 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


to Lady Place. There once more arose the 
problem of how two children of one sex can 
play nicely with a much younger child of the 
other. Fancy and Marion played at tea-parties 
under the weeping ash, and ‘Titus was the butler 
with a tin tray. Titus would presently run off 
and play by himself at soldiers, beating martial 
tattoos upon the tray. But now there was no 
danger of the youngest member of the party 
falling into the pond, for Aunt Lolly was al- 
ways on guard. 

Laura enjoyed the visits to Lady Place, but 
her enjoyment did not go very deep. ‘The 
knowledge that she now was a visitor where 
she had formerly been at home seemed to place 
a clear sheet of glass between her and her sur- 
roundings. She felt none of the grudge of the 
dispossessed; she scarcely gave a thought to the 
old days. It was as if in the agony of leaving 
Lady Place after her father’s death she had said 
good-bye so irremediably that she could never 
really come there again. 

But the visits to Lady Place came to a sad 
end, for in 1905 James died suddenly of heart- 
failure. Sibyl decided that she could not go on 
living alone in the country. A manager was 
found for the brewery, Lady Place was let un- 


63 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


furnished upon a long lease, and Sibyl and the 
four-years-old heir of the Willowes name and 
traditions moved to a small place in Hampstead. 
Sibyl had proposed to sell some of the furniture, 
for there was a great deal more of it than she 
needed, and most of it was too large to fit into 
her new dwelling. ‘This project was opposed 
by Henry, and with considerable heat. ‘The 
family establishment must, he admitted, be 
broken up, but he would allow no part of it 
to be alienated. All the furniture that could 
not be found room for at Hampstead or at 
Apsley Terrace must be stored till ‘Titus should 
be of an age to resume the tenure of Lady 
Place. 

To Laura it seemed as though some familiar 
murmuring brook had suddenly gone under- 
ground. ‘There it flowed, silenced and ob- 
scured, until the moment when it should re- 
appear and murmur again between green banks. 
She thought of ‘Titus as a grown man and her- 
self as an old woman meeting among’ the 
familiar belongings. She believed that when 
she was old the ghost-like feeling that distressed 
her would matter less. She hoped that she 
might not die before that day, if it were only ~ 
that she would remember so well, as Titus 


64 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


could not, how the furniture stood in the rooms 
and the pictures hung on the walls. | 

But by then, she said to herself, Titus would 
have a wife with tastes of her own. Sibyl 
would have liked to alter several things, but 
tradition had been too strong for her. It 
would be a very different matter in twenty 
years time. ‘The chairs and tables and cabinets 
would come out blinking and forgetful from 
their long storage in darkness. They would 
have lost the individuality by which they had 
made certain corners so surely their own. The 
- Lady Place she had known was over. She 
could remember it if she pleased; but she must 
not think of it. 

Meanwhile Emma’s harp trailed its strings 
in her bedroom. Ratafee was removed to 
Hampstead. ‘Titus had insisted upon this. 

She wondered if Henry felt as she did. He 
had shown a great deal of Willowes spirit over 
the furniture, but otherwise he had not ex- 
pressed himself. In person Henry, so it was 
said, resembled his grandfather who had made 
the move from Dorset to Somerset—the sacri- 
legious move which the home-loving of the 
~Willowes had so soon sanctified that in the 
third generation she was feeling like this about 


65 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


Lady Place. Henry seemed to resemble his 
grandfather in spirit also. He could house all 
the family traditions in his practical mind, and 
for the rest talk about bricks and mortar. He 
concerned himself with the terms of Sibyl’s 
lease, the agreement with the manager of the 
brewery, and the question of finding a satis- 
factory place to carry his family to for the 
holidays. 

After some experiments they settled down to 
a routine that*with a few modifications for the 
sake of variety or convenience served them for 
the next fifteen years. In spring they went to 
some moderately popular health resort and 
stayed in a hotel, for it was found that the un- 
certainty of an English spring, let alone the 
uncertainty of a Christian Easter, made lodg- 
ings unsatisfactory at that time of year. In 
summer they went into lodgings, or took a fur- 
nished house in some seaside village without any 
attractions. “hey did this, not to be econom- 
ical—there was no need for economy—but be- 
cause they found rather plain dull holidays the 
most refreshing. Henry was content with a 
little unsophisticated golf and float-fishing. 
The children bathed and played on the beach 
and went on bicycling expeditions; and Caro- 


66 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


line and Laura watched the children bathe and 
play, and replenished their stock of under- 
clothes, and rested from the strain of London 
housekeeping. Sometimes Caroline did a little 
reading. Sometimes Sibyl and ‘Titus stayed 
with them, or Jitus stayed with them alone 
while his mother paid visits. 

Laura looked forward with pleasure to the 
summer holidays (the Easter holidays she never 
cared about, as she had a particular dislike for 
palms); but after the first shock of arrival and 
smelling the sea, the days seemed to dribble out 
very much like the days in London. When 
the end came, and she looked back from the 
wagonette over the past weeks, she found that 
after all she had done few of the things she 
intended to do. She would have liked to go 
by herself for long walks inland and find 
strange herbs, but she was too useful to be al- 
lowed to stray. She had once formed an in- 
distinct project of observing limpets. But for 
all her observations she discovered little save 
that if you sit very still for a long time the 
limpet will begin to move sideways, and that 
it is almost impossible to sit very still for a long 
time and keep your attention fixed upon such a 
small object as a limpet without feeling slightly 

67 


LOLLY WILLOWES 
hypnotised and slightly sick. On the lowest 


count she seldom contrived to read all the books 
or to finish all the needlework which she had 
taken with her. And the freckles on her nose 
mocked her with the receptivity of her skin 
compared to the dullness of her senses. 

They were submerged in the usual quiet 
summer holidays when the war broke out. 
The parish magazine said: ‘““The vicar had 
scarcely left East Bingham when war was de- 
clared.” ‘The vicar was made of stouter stuff 
than they. He continued his holiday, but the 
Willoweses went back to London. Laura had 
never seen London in August before. It had 
an arrested look, as though the war were a 
kind of premature autumn. She was extraor- 
dinarily moved; as they drove across the river 
from Waterloo she wanted to cry. ‘That same 
evening Fancy went upstairs and scrubbed the 
boxroom floor for the sake of practice. She 
upset the bucket, and large damp patches ap- 
peared on the ceiling of Laura’s room. 

For a month Fancy behaved like a cat whose 
kittens have been drowned. If her family had 
not been so taken up with the war they would 
have been alarmed at this change in her de- 
meanour. As it was, they scarcely noticed it. 


68 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


When she came in very late for lunch and said: 
“T am going to marry Kit Bendigo on Satur- 
day,” Henry said, “Very well, my dear. It’s 


your day, not mine,” 


and ordered champagne 
to be brought up. For a moment Laura 
sthought she heard her father speaking. She 
knew that Henry disapproved of Kit Bendigo 
as a husband for Fancy: Willoweses did not 
mate with Bendigos. But now he was more 
than resigned—he was ready. And he swal- 
lowed the gnat as unswervingly as the camel, 
which, if Laura had wanted to be ill-natured 
just then, would have surprised her as being the 
greater feat. Wailloweses do not marry at five 
days’ notice. But Fancy was married on 
Saturday, and her parents discovered that a hasty 
wedding can cost quite as much as a formal 
one. In the mood that they were in this af- 
forded them some slight satisfaction. 

Kit Bendigo was killed in December 1916. 
Fancy received the news calmly; two years’ 
war-work and a daughter thrown in had 
steadied her nerves. Kit was a dear, of course, 
poor old Kit. But there was a war on, and 
people get killed in wars. If it came to that, 
she was working in a high-explosive shed her- 
self. Caroline could not understand her eldest 


69 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


daughter. She was baffled and annoyed by the 
turn her own good sense inherited had taken. 
‘The married nun looked at the widowed am- 
azon and refused battle. At least Fancy might 
stay in her very expensive flat and be a mother 
to her baby. But Fancy drew on a pair of, 
heavy gauntlet gloves and went to France to 
drive motor lorries. Caroline dared not say a 
word. 

‘The war had no such excitements for Laura. 
Four times a week she went to a depot and did 
up parcels. She did them up so well that no 
one thought of offering her a change of work. 
‘The parcel-room was cold and encumbered, 
early in the war some one had decorated the 
walls with recruiting posters. By degrees these 
faded. ‘The ruddy young man and his Spartan 
mother grew pale, as if with fear, and Bri- 
tannia’s scarlet cloak trailing on the waters 
bleached to a cocoa-ish pink. Laura watched 
them discolour with a muffled heart. She 
would not allow herself the cheap symbolism 
they provoked. ‘Time will bleach the scarlet 
from young men’s cheeks, and from Britannia’s 
mantle. But blood was scarlet as ever, and she 
believed that, however despairing her disap- 
proval, that blood was being shed for her. 


70 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


She continued to do up parcels until the 
eleventh day of November 1918. ‘Then, when 
she heard the noise of cheering and the sound- 
ing of hooters, she left her work and went 
home. ‘The house was empty. Every one had 
gone out to rejoice. She went up to her room 
and sat down on the bed. She felt cold and 
sick, she trembled from head to foot as once 
she had done after witnessing a dog-fight. All 
the hooters were sounding, they seemed to dom- 
ineer over the noises of rejoicing with sarcastic 
emphasis. She got up and walked about the 
room. On the mantelpiece was a photograph 
of Titus. ‘“‘Well,” she said to it, “‘you’ve 
escaped killing, anyhow.”? Her voice sounded 
harsh and unreal, she thought the walls of her 
room were shaking at the concussion, like stage 
walls. She lay down upon her bed, and pres- 
ently fainted. 

When she came to herself again she had been 
discovered by Caroline and put to bed with 
influenza. She was grateful for this, and for 
the darkened room and the cool clinking tum- 
blers. She was even grateful for the bad 
dreams which visited her every night and sent 
up her temperature. By their aid she was en- 
abled to stay in bed for a fortnight, a thing 


71 


LOU iY Sw id bY OoeE's 


she had not done since she came to London. 

When she went downstairs again she found 
Henry and Caroline talking of better days to 
come. ‘The house was unaltered, yet it had a 
general air of refurbishment. She also, after 
her fortnight in bed, felt somehow refurbished, 
and was soon drawn into the talk of better 
days. [here was nothing immoderate in the 
family display of satisfaction. Henry still 
found frowning matter in the Tvzmes, and 
Caroline did not relinquish a single economy. 
But the satisfaction was there, a demure 
Willowes-like satisfaction in the family tree 
that had endured the gale with an unflinching 
green heart. Laura saw nothing in this to 
quarrel with. She was rather proud of the 
Willowes war record; she admired the stolid 
decorum which had mastered four years of dis- 
integration, and was stolid and decorous still. 
A lady had inquired of Henry: ‘“‘What do you 
do in air-raids?. Do you go down to the cellar 
or up to the roof?” “We do neither,” Henry 
had replied. ‘We stay where we are.” <A 
thrill had passed through Laura when she heard 
this statement of the Willowes mind. But af- 
terwards she questioned the validity of the 
thrill. Was it nothing more than the response 


72 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


of her emotions to other old and honourable 
symbols such as the trooping of the colours and 
the fifteenth chapter of Corinthians, symbols 
too old and too honourable to have called out 
her thoughts? She saw how admirable it was 
for Henry and Caroline to have stayed where 
they were. But she was conscious, more con- 
scious than they were, that the younger mem- 
bers of the family had somehow moved into 
new positions. And she herself, had she not 
slightly strained against her moorings, fast and 
far sunk as they were? But now the buffeting 
waves withdrew, and she began to settle back 
into her place, and to see all around her once 
more the familiar undisturbed shadows of 
familiar things. Outwardly there was no dif- 
ference between her and Henry and Caroline 
in their resumption of peace. But they, she 
thought, had done with the war, whereas she 
had only shelved it, and that by an accident of 
consciousness. 

When the better days to come came, they 
proved to be modelled as closely as possible upon 
the days that were past. It was astonishing 
what little difference differences had made. 
When they went back to East Bingham—for 
owing to its military importance, East Bingham 


73 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


had been unsuited for holidays—there were at 
first a good many traces of war lying about, 
such as sandbags and barbed-wire entangle- 
ments, But on the following summer the 
sandbags had rotted and burst and the barbed- 
wire had been absorbed into the farmer’s fences. 
So, Laura thought, such warlike phenomena as 
Mr. Wolf-Saunders, Fancy’s second husband, 
and Jemima and Rosalind, Fancy’s two daugh- 
ters, might well disappear off the family land- 
scape. Mr. Wolf-Saunders recumbent on the 
beach was indeed much hike a sandbag, and no 
more arresting to the eye. Jemima and Rosa- 
lind were more obtrusive. Here was a new 
generation to call her Aunt Lolly and find her 
as indispensable as did the last. 

“It is quite like old times,” said Caroline, 
who sat working besidé her. “‘Isn’t it, Lolly?” 

“Except for these anachronisms,” said Laura. 

Caroline removed the seaweed which Jemima | 
had stuffed into her work-bag. “Bless them!” 
she said absently. ‘We shall soon be back in 
town again.” | 


74 


Part 2 


HE Willoweses came back to London 
about the second week in September. 
For many years the children’s schooling had 
governed the date of their return; and when 
the children had grown too old for school, the 
habit had grown too old to be broken. ‘There 
was also a further reason. ‘The fallen leaves, 
so Henry and Caroline thought, made the coun- 
try unhealthy after the second week in Septem- 
ber. When Laura was younger she had some- 
times tried to argue that, even allowing the un- 
healthiness of fallen leaves, leaves at that time 
of year were still green upon the trees. This 
was considered mere casuistry. When _ they 
walked in Kensington Gardens upon the first 
Sunday morning after their return, Caroline 
would point along the tarnishing vistas and say: 
“You see, Lolly, the leaves are beginning to fali. 
It was quite time to come home.” 
It was useless to protest that autumn begins 
earlier in London than it does in the country. 


75 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


That it did so, Laura knew well. ‘That was 
why she disliked having to come back; autumn 
boded her no good, and it was hard that by a 
day’s train-journey she should lose almost a 
month’s reprieve. Obediently looking along the 
tarnishing vistas, she knew that once again she 
was in for it. 

What It was exactly, she would have found 
hard to say. She sometimes told herself that it 
must be the yearly reverberation of those miser- 
able first months in London when her sorrow 
for her father’s death was still fresh. No other 
winter had been so cold or so long, not even the 
long cold winters of the war. Yet now her 
thoughts of Everard were mellowed and pain- 
less, and she had long ago forgiven her sorrow. 
Had the coming of autumn quickened in her 
only an experienced grief she would not have 
dreaded it thus, nor felt so restless and tor- 
mented. 

Her disquiet had no relevance to her life. It 
arose out of the ground with the smell of the 
dead leaves: it followed her through the dark- 
ening streets; it confronted her in the look of 
the risen moon. “Now! Now!” it said to 
her: and no more. ‘The moon seemed to have 
torn the leaves from the trees that it might stare 


76 


LOLLY WILLOWES 

at her more imperiously. Sometimes she tried 
to account for her uneasiness by saying that she 
was growing old, and that the year’s death re- 
minded her of her own. She compared herself 
to the ripening acorn that feels through wind- 
less autumnal days and nights the increasing pull 
of the earth below. ‘That explanation was very 
poetical and suitable. But it did not explain 
what she felt. She was not wildly anxious 
either to die or to live; why, then, should she 
be rent by this anxiety? 

At these times she was subject to a peculiar 
kind of day-dreaming, so vivid as to be almost a 
hallucination: that she was in the country, at 
dusk, and alone, and strangely at peace. She 
did not recall the places which she had visited 
in holiday-time, these reproached her like 
opportunities neglected. But while her body 
sat before the first fires and was cosy with 
Henry and Caroline, her mind walked by 
lonely seaboards, in marshes and fens, or came 
at nightfall to the edge of a wood. She never 
imagined herself in these places by daylight. 
She never thought of them as being in any way 
beautiful. It was not beauty at all that she 
wanted, or, depressed though she was, she would 
have bought a ticket to somewhere or other upon 


77 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


the Metropolitan railway and gone out to see 
the recumbent autumnal graces of the country- 
side. Her mind was groping after something 
that eluded her experience, a something that was 
shadowy and menacing, and yet in some way 
congenial; a something that lurked in waste 
places, that was hinted at by the sound of water 
gurgling through deep channels and by the voices 
of birds of ill-omen. Loneliness, dreariness, 
aptness for arousing a sense of fear, a kind of 
ungodly hallowedness—these were the things 
that called her thoughts away from the com- 
fortable fireside. 

In this mood she would sometimes go off to 
explore among the City churches, or to lose 
herself in the riverside quarters east of the Pool. 
She liked to think of the London of Defoe’s 
Journal, and to fancy herself back in the seven- 
teenth century, when, so it seemed to her, there 
were still darknesses in men’s minds. Once, 
hemmed in by the jostling tombstones at Bunhill 
Fields, she almost pounced on the clue to her 
disquiet; and once again in the goods-yard of. 
the G.W.R., where she had gone to find, not 
her own secret, but a case of apples for Caroline. 

As time went on Laura grew accustomed to 
this recurrent autumnal fever. It was as much 


78 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


a sign of the season as the falling leaves or the 
first frost. Before the end of November it was 
all over and done with. ‘The next moon had 
no message for her. Her rambles in the strange 
places of the mind were at an end. And if 
she still went on expeditions to Rotherhithe or 
the Jews’ Burying-Ground, she went in search 
for no more than a little diversion. Nothing 
was left but cold and sleet and the knowledge 
that all this fuss had been about nothing. She 
fortified herself against the dismalness of this 
reaction by various small self-indulgences. Out 
of these she had contrived for herself a sort of 
mental fur coat. Roasted chestnuts could be 
bought and taken home for bedroom eating. 
Second-hand book-shops were never so enticing; 
and the combination of east winds and London 
water made it allowable to experiment in the 
most expensive soaps. Coming back from her 
expeditions, westward from the city with the 
sunset in her eyes, or eastward from a waning 
Kew, she would pause for a sumptuous and 
furtive tea, eating marrons glacés with a silver 
fork in the reflecting warm glitter of a smart 
pastry-cook’s, “These things were exciting 
enough to be pleasurable, for she kept them 
secret. Henry and Caroline would scarcely 


79 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


have minded if they had known. ‘They were 
quite indifferent as to where and how she spent 
her afternoons; they felt no need to question 
her, since they could be sure that she would do 
nothing unsuitable or extravagant. Laura’s ex- 
peditions were secret because no one asked her 
where she had been. Had they asked, she must 
have answered. But she did not examine too 
closely into this; she liked to think of them as 
secret. 

One manifestation of the fur-coat policy, 
however, could not be kept from their knowl- 
edge, and that manifestation slightly qualified 
their trust that Laura would do nothing unsuit- 
able or extravagant. 

Except for a gradual increment of Christmas 
and birthday presents, Laura’s room had altered 
little since the day it ceased to be the small 
spare-room and became hers. But every win- 
ter it blossomed with an unseasonable lux- 
ury of flowers, profusely, shameless as a green- 
house. 

“Why, Lolly! Lilies at this time of year!” 
Caroline would say, not reproachfully, but still 
with a consciousness that in the drawing-room 
there were dahlias, and in the dining-room a 
fern, and in her own sitting-room, where she 


80 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


did the accounts, neither ferns nor flowers. 
Then Laura would thrust the liles into her 
hands; and she would take them to show that she 
had not spoken with ill-will. Besides, Lolly 
would really see more of them if they were in 
the drawing-room. And the next day she 
would meet Laura on the stairs carrying azaleas. 
On one occasion even Henry had noticed the 
splendour of the lilies: red lilies, angular, au- 
thoritative in form and colour like cardinals’ 
hats. 

“Where do these come from?” Caroline had 
asked, knowing well that nothing so costly in 
appearance could come from her florist. 

“From Africa,” Laura had answered, press- 
ing the firm, wet stalks into her hand. 

“Oh well, I daresay they are quite common 
said Caroline to herself, trying 


flowers there,” 


to gloss over the slight awkwardness of accept- 
ing a trifle so needlessly splendid. 
Henry had also asked where they came from. 
“From Anthos, I believe,” said Caroline. 
“Ah!” said Henry, and roused the coins in 
his trousers pocket. 
“Tt’s rather naughty of Lolly. Would you 
like me just to hint to her that she mustn’t be 
quite so reckless?” 


81 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


“No. Better not. No need for her to worry 
about such things.” 

Husband and wife exchanged a glance of 
compassionate understanding. It was better not. 
Much better that Lolly should not be worried 
about money matters. She was safe in their 
hands. ‘They could look after Lolly. Henry 
was like a wall, and Caroline’s breasts were like 
towers. 

They condoned this extravagance, yet they 
mistrusted it. “Time justified them in their 
mistrust. Like many stupid people, they pos- 
sessed acute instincts. ‘He that is unfaithful in 
little things . . .” Caroline would say when 
the children forgot to wind up their watches. 
Their instinct told them that the same truth 
applies to extravagance in little things. “They 
were wiser than they knew. When Laura’s 
extravagance in great things came it staggered 
them so completely that they forgot how ju- 
diciously they had suspected it beforehand. 

It befell in the winter of 1921. “The war 
was safely over, so was their silver wedding, so” 
was Marion’s first confinement. ‘Titus was in 
his third year at Oxford, Sibyl was at last going 
grey, Henry might be made a judge at any 
moment. ‘The Trade Returns and the Stock 

82 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


Exchange were not all that they should be, and 
there was always the influenza. But Henry 
was doing well enough to be lenient to his 
investments, and Aunt Lucilla and her fortune 
had been mercifully released. In the coming 
spring Caroline proposed to have the house 
thoroughly done up. ‘The lesser renovations 
she was getting over beforehand, and that was 
why Laura had gone out before the shops shut 
to show Mr. Bunting a pair of massy candle- 
sticks and to inquire how much he would charge 
for re-plating them. His estimate was high, 
too high to be accepted upon her own responsi- 
bility. She decided to carry the candlesticks 
back and consult Caroline. 

Mr. Bunting lived in the Earls Court Road, 
rather a long way off for such a family friend. 
But she had plenty of time for walking back, 
and for diversion she thought she would take 
a circuitous route, including the two foxes who 
guard the forsaken approach in Holland Park 
and the lane beside the Bayswater Synagogue. 
It was in Moscow Road that she began to be 
extravagant. But when she walked into the 
little shop she had no particular intention of 
extravagance, for Caroline’s parcel hung re- 
mindingly upon her arm, and the shop itself, 

83 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


half florist and half greengrocer, had a simple 
appearance. 

There were several other customers, and 
while she stood waiting to be served she looked 
about her. ‘The aspect of the shop pleased her 
greatly. It was small and homely. Fruit and 
flowers and vegetables were crowded together in 
countrified disorder. On the sloping shelf in 
the window, among apples and rough-skinned 
cooking pears and trays of walnuts, chestnuts, 
and filberts, was a basket of eggs, smooth and 
brown, like some larger kind of nut. At one 
side of the room was a wooden staging. On 
this stood jars of home-made jam and bottled 
fruits. It was as though the remnants of 
summer had come into the little shop for shelter. 
On the floor lay a heap of earthy turnips. 

Laura looked at the bottled fruits, the sliced 
pears in syrup, the glistening red plums, the 
greengages. She thought of the woman who 
had filled those jars and fastened on the blad- 
ders. Perhaps the greengrocer’s mother lived in 
the country. A solitary old woman picking 
fruit in a darkening orchard, rubbing her rough 
fingertips over the smooth-skinned plums, a lean 
wiry old woman, standing with upstretched arms 
among her fruit trees as though she were a tree 


84 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


herself, growing out of the long grass, with 
arms stretched up like branches. It grew darker 
and darker; still she worked on, methodically 
stripping the quivering taut boughs one after the 
other. 

As Laura stood waiting she felt a great long- 
ing. It weighed upon her lke the load of 
ripened fruit upon a tree. She forgot the shop, 
the other customers, her own errand. She for- 
got the winter air outside, the people going by 
on the wet pavements. She forgot that she was 
in London, she forgot the whole of her London 
life. She seemed to be standing alone in a 
darkening orchard, her feet in the grass, her 
arms stretched up to the pattern of leaves and 
fruit, her fingers seeking the rounded ovals of 
the fruit among the pointed ovals of the leaves. 
The air about her was cool and moist. There 
was no sound, for the birds had left off singing 
and the owls had not yet begun to hoot. No 
sound, except sometimes the soft thud of a ripe 
plum falling into the grass, to lie there a com- 
pact shadow among shadows. ‘The back of her 
neck ached a little with the strain of holding up 
her arms. Her fingers searched among the 
leaves. 

She started as the man of the shop came up 


85 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


to her and asked her what she wished for. Her 
eyes blinked, she looked with surprise at the 
gloves upon her hands. 

“T want one of those large chrysanthemums,” 
she said, and turned towards the window where 
they stood in a brown jar. ‘There were the 
apples and pears, the eggs, the disordered nuts 
overflowing from their compartments. There 
on the floor were the earthy turnips, and close 
at hand were the jams and bottled fruits. If 
she was behaving foolishly, if she looked like 
a woman roused out of a fond dream, these 
were kindly things to waken to. “The man of 
the shop also had a kind face. He wore a 
gardener’s apron, and his hands were brown and 
dry as if he had been handling earth. 

“Which one would you like, ma’am?” he 
asked, turning the bunch of chrysanthemums 
about that she might choose for herself. She 
looked at the large mop-headed blossoms. 
‘Their curled petals were deep garnet colour 
within and tawny yellow without. As the light 
fell on their sleek flesh the garnet colour 
glowed, the tawny yellow paled as if it were 
thinly washed with silver. She longed for the 
moment when she might stroke her hand over 
those mop heads. 

86 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


“T think I will take them all,” she said. 

““They’re lovely blooms,” said the man. 

He was pleased. He did not expect such a 
good customer at this late hour. 

When he brought her the change from her 
pound-note and the chrysanthemums pinned up 
in sheets of white paper, he brought also several 
sprays of beech leaves. ‘These, he explained, 
were thrown in with her purchase. Laura took 
them into her arms. ‘The great fans of orange 
tracery seemed to her even more beautiful than 
the chrysanthemums, for they had been given 
to her, they were a surprise. She sniffed. 
‘They smelt of woods, of dark rustling woods 
like the wood to whose edge she came so often 
in the country of her autumn imagination. She 
stood very still to make quite sure of her sensa- 
tions. ‘Then: “Where do they come from?” 
she asked. 

“From near Chenies, ma’am, in Buckingham- 
shire. I have a sister living there, and every 
Sunday I go out to see her, and bring back a 
load of foliage with me.” 

There was no need to ask now who made 
the jams and tied on the bladders. Laura knew 
all that she wanted to know. Her course lay 
clear before her. Holding the sprays of beech 

87 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


as though she were marching on Dunsinane, she 
went to a bookseller’s. “There she bought a 
small guide-book to the Chilterns and inquired 
for a map of that district. It must, she ex- 
plained, be very detailed, and give as many 
names and footpaths as possible. Her eyes were 
so bright and her demands so earnest that the 
bookseller, though he had not that kind of map, 
was sympathetic, and directed her to another 
shop where she could find what she wanted. 
It was only a little way off, but closing-time 
was at hand, so she took a taxi. Having bought 
the map she took another taxi home. But at 
the top of Apsley Terrace she had one of her 
impulses of secrecy and told the driver that she 
would walk the rest of the way. 

‘There was rather a narrow squeak in the 
hall, for Caroline’s parcel became entangled in 
the gong stand, and she heard Henry coming 
up from the wine cellar. If she alarmed the 
gong Henry would quicken his steps. She had 
no time to waste on Henry just then for she 
had a great deal to think of before dinner. She 
ran up to her room, arranged the chrysanthe- 
mums and the beech leaves, and began to read 
the guide-book. It was just what she wanted, 
for it was extremely plain and unperturbed. 


88 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


Beginning as early as possible with Geology, it 
passed to Flora and Fauna, Watersheds, Ecclesi- 
astical Foundations «and Local Government. 
After that came a list of all the towns and vil- 
lages, shortly described in alphabetical order. 
Lamb’s End had three hundred inhabitants and 
a perpendicular font. At Walpole St. Dennis 
was the country seat of the Bartlet family, faced 
With stucco and situated upon an eminence. 
The almshouses at Semple, built in 1703 by 
Bethia Hood, had a fine pair of wrought-iron 
gates. It was dark as she pressed her nose 
against the scrolls and rivets. Bats flickered in 
the little courtyard, and shadows moved across 
the yellow blinds. Had she been born a deserv- 
ing widow, life would have been simplified. 

She wasted no time over this regret, for now 
at last she was simplifying life for herself. She 
unfolded the map. ‘The woods were coloured 
green and the main roads red. ‘There was a 
great deal of green. She looked at the beech 
leaves. As she looked a leaf detached itself and 
fell slowly. She remembered squirrels. 

The stairs creaked under the tread of Dunlop 
with the hot-water can. Dunlop entered, 
glancing neither at Laura curled askew on the 
bed nor at the chrysanthemums ennobling the 


89 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


dressing table. She was a perfectly trained 
servant. Before she left the room she took a 
deep breath, stooped down, and picked up the 
beech leaf. 

Quarter of an hour afterwards Laura ex- 
claimed: ‘Oh! a windmill!” She took up 
the guide-book again, and began to read in- 
tently. 

She was roused by an unaccustomed clash of 
affable voices in the hall. She remembered, 
leapt off the bed, and dressed rapidly for the 
family dinner-party. ‘They were all there when 
she reached the drawing-room. Sibyl and 
Titus, Fancy and her Mr. Wolf-Saunders, 
Marion with the latest news from Sprat, who, 
being in the Soudan, could not dine out with 
his wife. Sprat had had another boil on 
his neck, but it had yielded to treatment. 
“Ah, poor fellow,” said Henry. He seemed 
to be saying: “The price of Empire.” 

During dinner Laura looked at her relations. 
She felt as though she had awoken, unchanged, 
from a twenty-years slumber, to find them 
almost unrecognisable. She surveyed them, one 
after the other. Even Henry and Caroline, 
whom she saw every day, were half hidden un- 
der their accumulations—accumulations of vros- 


go 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


perity, authority, daily experience. “They were 
carpeted with experience. No new event could 
set jarring feet on them but they would absorb 
and muffle the impact. If the boiler burst, if a 
policeman climbed in at the window waving a 
sword, Henry and Caroline would bring the 
situation to heel by their massive experience of 
normal boilers and normal policemen. 

She turned her eyes to Sibyl. How strange 
it was that Sibyl should have exchanged her 
former look of a pretty ferret for this refined 
and waxen mask. Only when she was silent, 
though, as now she was, listening to Henry with 
her eyes cast down to her empty plate: when 
she spoke the ferret look came back. But Sibyl 
in her house at Hampstead must have spent 
many long afternoons in silence, learning this 
unexpected beauty, preparing her face for 
the last look of death. What had been her 
thoughts? Why was she so different when she 
spoke? Which, what, was the real Sibyl: the 
greedy, agile little ferret or this memorial urn? 

Fancy’s Mr. Wolf-Saunders had eaten all his 
bread and was at a loss. Laura turned to him 
and asked after her great-nephew, who was just 
then determined to be a bus-conductor. “He 


probably will be,” said his father gloomily, 
gi 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


“if things go on as they are at present.” 

Great-nephews and great-nieces suggested 
nephews and nieces. Resuming her scrutiny of 
the table she looked at Fancy, Marion, and 
Titus. They had grown up as surprisingly as 
trees since she first knew them, and yet it did 
not seem to her that they were so much changed 
as their elders. ‘Titus, in particular, was easily 
recognisable. She caught his eye, and he smiled 
back at her, just as he had smiled back when he 
was a baby. Now he was long and slim, and 
his hay-coloured hair was brushed smoothly back 
instead of standing up ina crest. But one lock 
had fallen forward when he laughed, and hung 
over his left eye, and this gave him a pleasing, 
rustic look. She was glad still to be friends 
with Titus. He might very usefully abet her, 
and though she felt in no need of allies, a little 
sympathy would do no harm. Certainly the 
rustic forelock made ‘Titus look particularly con- 
genial. And how greedily he was eating that 
apple, and with what disparagement of imported 
fruit he had waved away the Californian plums! 
It was nice to feel sure of his understanding and 
approval, since at this moment he was looking 
the greatest Willowes of them all. 

Most of the family attention was focussed on 


92 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


Titus that evening. No sooner had coffee been 
served than Sibyl began about his career. Had 
Caroline ever heard of anything more ridic- 
ulous? ‘Titus still declared that he meant to 
manage the family brewery. After all his suc- 
cess at Oxford and his popularity, could any- 
thing be more absurd than to bury himself in 
Somerset? 

His own name was the first thing that Titus 
heard as he entered the drawing-room. He 
greeted it with an approving smile, and sat down 
by Laura, carefully crossing his long legs. 

“She spurns at the brewery, and wants me to 
take a studio in Hampstead and model bustos,”’ 
he éxplained. 

‘Titus had a soft voice. His speech was 
gentle and sedate. He chose his words with 
extreme care, but escaped the charge of affecta- 
tion by pronouncing them in a hesitating man- 
ner. 

“T’m sure sculpture is his métier,” said Sibyl. 
“Or perhaps poetry. Anyhow, not brewing. I 
wish you could have seen that little model he 
made for the grocer at Arcachon.” 

Marion said: “I thought bustos always had 
wigs.” 

“My dear, you’ve hit it. In fact, that is 

93 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


my objection to this plan for making me 
a sculptor. Revive the wig, and I object 
no more. The head is the noblest part of 
man’s anatomy. ‘Therefore enlarge it with a 
wig.” 

Henry thought the conversation was taking a 
foolish turn. But as host it was his duty to 
take part in it. 

“What about the Elgin Marbles?” he in- 
quired. “No wigs there.” 

‘The Peruke and its Functions in Attic Drama, 
thought Titus, would be a pretty fancy. But 
it would not do for his uncle. Agreeably he 
admitted that there were no wigs in the Elgin 
Marbles. 

They fell into silence. At an ordinary din- 
ner party Caroline would have felt this silence 
to be a token that the dinner party was a failure. 
But this was a family affair, there was no dis- 
grace in having nothing to say. They were all 
Willoweses and the silence was a seemly Wil- 
lowes silence. She could even emphasise it by 
counting her stitches aloud. | 

All the chairs and sofas were comfortable. 
The fire burnt brightly, the curtains hung in 
solemn folds; they looked almost as solemn as 
organ pipes. Lolly had gone off into one of 


94 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


her day dreams, just her way, she would never 
trouble to give a party the least prod. Only 
Sibyl fidgeted, twisting her heel about in her 
satin slipper. 

“What pretty buckles, Sibyl! Have I seen 
them before?” 

Sibyl had bought them second-hand for next 
to nothing. ‘They came from Arles, and the 
old lady who had sold them to her had been 
such a character. She repeated the character- 
istic remarks of the old lady in a very competent 
French accent. Her feet were as slim as ever, 
and she could stretch them out very prettily. 
Even in doing so she remembered to ask Car- 
oline where they were going for the Easter 
holidays. 

“Oh, to Blythe, I expect,’ said Caroline. 
“We know it.” 

“When I have evicted my tenants and brewed 
a large butt of family ale, I shall invite you all 
down to Lady Place,” said ‘Titus. 

“But before then,” said Laura, speaking 
rather fast, “I hope you will all come to visit 
me at Great Mop.” 

Every one turned to stare at her in bewilder- 
ment. 

“Of course, it won’t be as comfortable as 


99 


LOLLY WILLOWES 
Lady Place. And I don’t suppose there will 


be room for more than one of you at a time. 
But I’m sure you’ll think it delightful.” 

“T don’t understand,” said Caroline. ‘What 
is this place, Lolly?” 

“Great Mop. It’s not really Great. It’s in 
the Chilterns.” 

“But why should we go there?” 

“To visit me. I’m going to live there.” 

“Live there? My dear Lolly!” 

“Live there, Aunt Lolly?” 

““This is very sudden. Is there really a place 
called yer Wet 2 

“Lolly, you are mystifying us.” 

They all spoke at once, but Henry spoke 
loudest, so Laura replied to him. 

“No, Henry, I’m not mystifying you. Great 
Mop is a village in the Chilterns, and I am go- 
ing to live there, and perhaps keep a donkey. | 
And you must all come on visits.” 

“T’ve never even heard of the place!” said 
Henry conclusively. 

‘' “But you'll love it. ‘A secluded hamlet in 
the heart of the Chilterns, Great Mop is situated 
twelve miles from Wickendon in a hilly district 
with many beech-woods. The parish church 


96 


LOLLY WILLOWES 
has a fine Norman tower and a squint. The 
population is 227.” And quite close by on 
a hill there is a ruined windmill, and the 
nearest railway station is twelve miles off, and 


there is a farm called Scramble Through the | 


Pec 

Henry thought it time to interrupt. “I sup- 
pose you don’t expect us to believe all this.” 

“I know. It does seem almost too good to 
be true. But it is. DPve read it in a guide- 
book, and seen it on a map.” 

Bevel, all I can’say is... .” 

“Henry! Henry!” said Caroline warningly. 
Henry did not say it. He threw the cushion 
out of his chair, glared at Laura, and turned 
away his head. 

For some time Titus’s attempts at speech had 
hovered above the tumult, like one holy ap- 
peasing dove loosed after the other. The last 
dove was luckier. It settled on Laura. 

“How nice of you to have a donkey. Will 
it be a grey donkey, like Madam?” 

“Do you remember dear Madam, then?” 

“Of course [ remember dear Madam. I can 
remember everything that happened to me when 
I was four. I rode in one pannier, and you, 


97 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


Marion, rode in the other. And we went to 
have tea in Potts’s Dingle.” 

“With sponge cakes and raspberry jam, do 
you remember?” 

“Yes. And milk surging in a whisky bottle. 
Will you have thatch or slate, Aunt Lolly? 
Slate is very practical.” 

“Thatch is more motherly. Anyhow, I shall 
have a pump.” 

“Will it be an indoor or an outdoor pump? 
I ask, for I hope to pump on it quite often.” 

“You will come to stay with me, won’t you, 
Titus?” 

Laura was a little cast-down. It did not 
look, just then, as if any one else wanted to come 
and stay with her at Great Mop. But Titus 
was as sympathetic as she had hoped. ‘They 
spent the rest of the evening telling each other 
how she would live. By half-past ten their 
conjectures had become so fantastic that the rest 
of the family thought the whole scheme was 
nothing more than one of Lolly’s odd jokes that 
nobody was ever amused by. Henry took heart. 
He rallied Laura, supposing that when she lived 
at Great Mop she would start hunting for cat- 
nip again, and become the village witch. 


98 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


“How lovely!” said Laura. 

Henry was satisfied. Obviously Laura could 
not be in earnest. 

When the guests had gone, and Henry had 
bolted and chained the door, and put out the 
hall light, Laura hung about a little, thinking 
that he or Caroline might wish to ask her more. 
But they asked nothing and went upstairs to 
bed. Soon after, Laura followed them. As 
she passed their bedroom door she heard their 
voices within, the comfortable fragmentary 
talk of a husband and wife with complete con- 
fidence in each other and nothing particular 
to say. 

Laura decided to tackle Henry on the mor- 
row. She observed him during breakfast and 
saw with satisfaction that he seemed to be in a 
particularly benign mood. He had drunk three 
cups of coffee, and said “Ah! poor fellow!” 
when a wandering cornet-player began to play 
on the pavement opposite. Laura took heart 
from these good omens, and, breakfast being 
over, and her brother and the Tzmes retired to 
the study, she followed them thither. 

“Henry,” she said. “I have come for a talk 
with you.” 


a9 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


Henry looked up. “Talk away, Lolly,” he 
said, and smiled at her. 

‘*A business talk,” she continued. 

Henry folded the Times and laid it aside. 
He also (if the expression may be allowed) 
folded and laid aside his smile. 

“Now, Lolly, what is it?” 

His voice was kind, but business-like. Laura 
took a deep breath, twisted the garnet ring 
round her little finger, and began. 

“Tt has just occurred to me, Henry, that I 
am forty-seven.” 

She paused. 

“Go on!” said Henry. 

“And that both the girls are married. I 
don’t mean that that has just occurred to me 
too, but it’s part of it. You know, really I’m 
not much use to you now.” 

“My dear Lolly!” remonstrated her brother. 
“You are extremely useful. Besides, I have 
never considered our relationship in that light.” 

“So I have been thinking. And I have de- 
cided that I should like to go and live at Great 
Mop. You know, that place I was talking 
about last night.” 

Henry was silent. His face was completely 
blank. Should she recall Great Mop to him 

100 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


by once more repeating the description out of 
the guide-book? 

“In the Chilterns,” she murmured. “Pop. 
oo." 

Henry’s silence was unnerving her. 

“Really, I think it would be a good plan. I 
should like to live alone in the country. And 
in my heart I think I have always meant to, 
one day. But one day is so like another, it’s 
almost impossible to throw salt on its tail. If 
I don’t go soon, I never shall. So if you don’t | 
mind, I should like to start as soon as possible.”’ 

‘There was another long pause. She could 
not make out Henry at all. It was not like 
him to say nothing when he was annoyed. She 
had expected thunders and tramplings, and those 
she could have weathered. But thus becalmed 
under a lowering sky she was beginning to lose 
her head. 

At last he spoke. 

“T hardly know what to say.” 

“T’m sorry if the idea annoys you, Henry.” 

“T am not annoyed. Jam grieved. Grieved 
and astonished. For twenty years you have 
lived under my roof. J have always thought— 
I may be wrong, but I have always thought 
—that you were happy here.” 

IOL 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


“Quite happy,” said Laura. 

“Caroline and I have done all we could to 
make youso. ‘The children—e// the children— 
look on you as a second mother. We are all 
devoted to you. And now, without a word of 
warning, you propose to leave us and go and 
live at a place called Great Mop. Lolly! I 
must ask you to put this ridiculous idea out of 
your head.” 

“T never expected you to be so upset, Henry. 
Perhaps I should have told you more gradually. 
I should be sorry to hurt you.” 

“You have hurt me, I admit,” said he, firmly 
seizing on this advantage. “Still, let that pass. 
Say you won’t leave us, Lolly.” 

“T’m afraid I can’t quite do that.” 

“But Lolly, what you want is absurd.” 

“Tt’s only my own way, Henry.” 

“If you would like a change, take one by all 
means. Go away for a fortnight. Go away 
fora month! ‘Take a little trip abroad if you 
like. But come back to us at the end of it.” 

“No, Henry. I love you all, but I feel I 
have lived here long enough.” 

“But why? But why? What has come 
over you?” 

Laura shook her head. 

102 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


“Surely you must have some reasons.” 

“T have told you my reasons.” 

“Lolly! I cannot allow this. You are my 
sister. I consider you my charge. I must ask 
you, once for all to drop this idea. It is not 
sensible. Or suitable.” 

“I have reminded you that I am forty-seven. 
If I am not old enough now to know what is 
sensible and suitable, I never shall be.” 

“Apparently not.” 

‘This was more like Henry’s old form. But 
though he had scored her off, it did not seem to 
have encouraged him as much as scoring off 
generally did. He began again, almost as a 
suppliant. 

“Be guided by me, Lolly. At least, take a 
few days to think it over.” 

“No, Henry. I don’t feel inclined to; Td 
much rather get it over now. Besides, if you 
are going to disapprove as violently as this, the 
sooner I pack up and start the better.” 

“You are mad. You talk of packing up and 
starting when you have never even set eyes on 
the place.” 

“T was thinking of going there to-day, te 
make arrangements.” 

“Well, then, you will do nothing of the kind. 

| 103 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


I’m sorry to seem harsh, Lolly. But you must 
put all this out of your mind.” 

“Why?” 

“Tt is impracticable.” 

“Nothing is impracticable for a single, 
middle-aged woman with an income of her 
own.” 

Henry paled slightly, and said: “Your in- 
come is no longer what it was.” 

“Oh, taxes!” said Laura contemptuously. 
“Never mind; even if it’s a little less, I can get 
along on it.” 

“You know nothing of business, Lolly. I 
need not enter into explanations with you. It 
should be enough for me to say that for the last 
year your income has been practically non- 
existent.” 

“But I can still cash cheques.” 

“TI have placed a sum at the bank to your 
credit.” 

Laura had grown rather pale too. Her eyes 
shone. 

“T’m afraid you must enter into explanations 
with me, Henry. After all, it is my income, 
and I have a right to know what has happened 
to it.” 

“Your capital has always been in my hands, 

104 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


Lolly, and I have administered it as I thought 
fit.” | 

“Go on,” said Laura. 

“In 1920 I transferred the greater part of it 
to the Ethiopian Development Syndicate, a per- 
fectly sound investment which will in time be 
as good as ever, if not better. Unfortunately, 
owing to this Government and all this socialistic 
talk the soundest investments have been badly 
hit. ‘The Ethiopian Development Syndicate is 
one of them.” 

“Go on, Henry. I have understood quite 
well so far. You have administered all my 
money into something that doesn’t pay. Now 
explain why you did this.” 

“T had every reason for thinking that I should 
be able to sell out at a profit almost immediately. 
During November the shares had gone up from 
534 to 8%. I bought in December at 8%. 
They went to 834 and since then have steadily 
sunk. ‘They now stand at 4. Of course, my 
dear, you needn’t be alarmed. ‘They will rise 
again the moment we have a Conservative Gov- 
ernment, and that, thank Heaven, must come 
soon. But you see at present it is out of the 
question for you to think of leaving us.” 

“But don’t these Ethiopians have dividends?” 

105 


LOLLY WILLOWES 

“These,” said Henry with dignity, “are not 
the kind of shares that pay dividends. “They 
are—that is to say, they were, and of course 
will be again—a sound speculative investment. 
But at present they pay no dividends worth men- 
tioning. Now, Lolly, don’t become agitated. 
J assure you that it is all perfectly all right. 
But you must give up this idea of the country. 


Anyhow, I’m sure you wouldn’t find it suit you. 


You are rheumatic 

Laura tried to interpose. 

“—or will be. All the Willoweses are rheu- 
matic. Buckinghamshire is damp. ‘Those po- 
etical beech-woods make it so.. You see, trees 
draw rain. It is one of the principles of at- 
forestation. “The trees—that is to say, the 


>] 


rain 

Laura stamped her foot with impatience. 
“Have done with your trumpery red herrings!” 
she cried. 

She had never lost her temper like this be- 
fore. It was a glorious sensation. 

“Henry!” She could feel her voice crackle 
round his ears. ‘You say you bought those 
shares at eight and something, and that they are 
now four. So if you sell out now yeu will 

106 


LOLLY WILLOWES 
get rather less than half what you gave for 
them.” 

“Yes,” said Henry. Surely if Lolly were 
business woman enough to grasp that so clearly, 
she would in time see reason on other matters. 

“Very well. You will sell them immedi- 
ately 4 

“Lolly!” 

“and reinvest the money in something quite 
unspeculative and unsound, like War Loan, that 
will pay a proper dividend. TI shall still have 
enough to manage on. I shan’t be as com fort- 
able as I thought I should be. I shan’t be able 
to afford the little house that I hoped for, nor 
the donkey. But I shan’t mind much. It will 
matter very little to me when I’m there.” 

She stopped. She had forgotten Henry, and 
the unpleasant things she meant to say to him. 
She had come to the edge of the wood, and felt 
its cool breath in her face. It did not matter 
about the donkey, nor the house, nor the dark- 


ening orchard even. If she were not to pick 

fruit from her own trees, there were common 

herbs and berries in plenty for her, growing 

wherever she chose to wander. It is best as 

one grows older to strip oneself of possessions, 
107 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


to shed oneself downward like a tree, to be 
almost wholly earth before one dies. 

As she left the room she turned and looked at 
Henry. Such was her mood, she could have 
blessed him solemnly, as before an eternal de- 
parture. But he was sitting with his back to 
her, and did not look round. When she had 
gone he took out his handkerchief and wiped 
his forehead. 

Ten days later Laura arrived at Great Mop. 
After the interview with Henry she encountered 
no more opposition. Caroline knew better than 
to persist against an obstinacy which had worsted 
her husband, and the other members of the 
family, their surprise being evaporated, were in- 
different. ‘Titus was a little taken aback when 
he found that his aunt’s romantic proposals were 
seriously intended. He for his part was going 
to Corsica. ‘A banal mountainous spot,” he 
said politely, ““compared with Buckinghamshire.” 

The day of Laura’s arrival was wet and 
blusterous. She drove in a car from Wicken- 
don. ‘The car lurched and rattled, and the wind 
slapped the rain against the windows; Laura 
could scarcely see the rising undulations of the 
landscape. When the car drew up before her 
new home, she stood for a moment looking up 

108 


LOLLY WILLOWES 
the village street, but the prospect was inter- 
. cepted by the umbrella under which Mrs. Leak 
hastened to conduct her to the porch. So had 
it rained, and so had the wind blown, on the 
day when she had come on her visit of inspec- 
tion and had taken rooms in Mrs. Leak’s cot- 
tage. So, Henry and Caroline and their friends 
had assured her, did it rain and blow all through 
the winter in the Chilterns. No words of 
theirs, they said, could describe how dismal and 
bleak it would be among those unsheltered 
hills. ‘To Laura, sitting by the fire in her 
parlour, the sound of wind and rain was pleas- 
ant. “Weather like this,” she thought, “would 
never be allowed in London.” 

The unchastened gusts that banged against 
the side of the house and drove the smoke down 
the chimney, and the riotous gurgling of the 
rain in the gutters were congenial to her spirit. 
“Hoo! You daredevil,” said the wind. ‘‘Have 
you come out to join us?” Yet sitting there 
with no companionship except those exciting 
voices she was quiet and happy. 

Mrs. Leak’s tea was strong Indian tea. ‘The 
bread-and-butter was cut in thick slices, and 
underneath it was a crocheted mat; there was 
plum jam in a heart-shaped glass dish, and a 

109 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


plate of rather heavy jam-puffs. It was not 
quite so good as the farmhouse teas she remem- 
bered in Somerset, but a great deal better than 
teas at Apsley Terrace. 

Tea being done with, Laura took stock of 
her new domain. ‘The parlour was furnished 
with a large mahogany table, four horsehair 
chairs and a horsehair sofa, an armchair, and a 
sideboard, rather gimcrack compared to the rest 
of the furniture. On the walls, which were 
painted green, hung a print of the Empress 
Josephine and two rather scowling classical 
landscapes with ruined temples, and volcanoes. 
On either side of the hearth were cupboards, 
and the fireplace was of a cottage pattern with 
hobs, and a small oven on one side. ‘This fire- 
place had caught Laura’s fancy when she first 
looked at the rooms. She had stipulated with 
Mrs. Leak that, should she so wish, she might 
cook on it. ‘There are some things—mush- 
rooms, for instance, or toasted cheese—which 
can only be satisfactorily cooked by the eater. 
Mrs. Leak had made no difficulties. She was 
an oldish woman, sparing of her words and 
moderate in her demands. Her husband worked 
at the sawmill. They were childless. She 
had never let lodgings before, but till last year 

1 fe) 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


an aunt with means of her own had occupied 
the parlour and bedroom which were now 
Laura’s. 

It did not take Laura very long to arrange 
her belongings, for she had brought little. Soon 
after supper, which consisted of rabbit, bread and 
cheese, and table beer, she went upstairs to bed. 
Moving about her small cold bedroom she sud- 
denly noticed that the wind had fallen, and that 
it was no longer raining. She pushed aside a 
corner of the blind and opened the window. 
The night air was cold and sweet, and the full 
moon shone high overhead. The sky was 
cloudless, lovely, and serene; a few stars 
glistened there like drops of water about to fall. 
For the first time she was looking at the intri- 
cate landscape of rounded hills and scooped 
valleys which she had chosen for learning by 
heart. 

Dark and compact, the beech-woods lay upon 
the hills. Alighting as noiselessly as an owl, a 
white cat sprang up on to the garden fence. It 
glanced from side to side, ran for a yard or two 
along the top of the fence and jumped off again, 
going secretly on its way. Laura sighed for 
happiness. She had no thoughts; her mind was 
swept as clean and empty as the heavens. For 

III 


LOLLY WILLOWES 
a long time she continued to lean out of the 
window, forgetting where she was and how she 
had come there, so unearthly was her content- 
ment. 

Nevertheless her first days at Great Mop gave 
her little real pleasure. She wrecked them by 
her excitement. Every morning immediately 
after breakfast she set out to explore the coun- 
try. She believed that by eating a large break- 
fast she could do without lunch. ‘The days 
were short, and she wanted to make the most 
of them, and making the most of the days and 
going back for lunch did not seem to her to be 
compatible. Unfortunately, she was not used 
to making large breakfasts, so her enthusiasm 
was qualified by indigestion until about four 
P.M., when both enthusiasm and indigestion 
yielded to a faintish feeling. Then she turned 
back, generally by road, since it was growing 
too dark to find out footpaths, and arrived home 
with a limp between six and seven. She knew 
in her heart that she was not really enjoying this 
sort of thing, but the habit of useless activity 
was too strong to be snapped by change of scene. 
And in the evening, as she looked at the map 
and marked where she had been with little 
bleeding footsteps of red ink, she was enchanted 

112 


LOLLY WILLOWES 
afresh by the names and the bridle-paths, and, 
forgetting the blistered heel and the dissatisfac- 
tion of that day’s walk, planned a new walk 
for the morrow. 

Nearly a week had gone by before she righted 
herself. She had made an appointment with 
the sunset that she should see it from the top 
of a certain hill. ‘The hill was steep, and the 
road turned and twisted about its sides. It was 
clear that the sunset would be at their meeting- 
place before she was, nor would it be likely to 
kick its heels and wait about for her. She 
looked at the sky and walked faster. The road 
took a new and unsuspected turn, concealed be- 
hind the clump of trees by which she had been 
measuring her progress up the hill. She was 
growing more and more flustered, and at this 
prick she: lost her temper entirely. She was 
tired, she was miles from Great Mop, and she 
had made a fool of herself. An abrupt beam 
of light shot up from behind the hedge as 
though the sun in vanishing below the horizon 
had winked at her. “This sort of thing,”’ she 
said aloud, “has got to be put a stop to.” She 
sat down in the extremely comfortable ditch to 
think. | 

The shades that had dogged her steps up the 


113 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


hill closed in upon her as she sat in the ditch, 
but when she took out her map there was enough 
light to enable her to see where the nearest inn 
lay. It was close at hand; when she got there 
she could just read its name on the sign. Its 
name was The Reason Why. Entering The 
Reason Why, she ordered tea and a conveyance 
to drive her back to Great Mop. When she 
left the inn it was a brilliant night of stars. 
Outside stood a wagonette drawn by a large 
white horse. Piled on the seat of the wagon- 
ette were a number of waterproof rugs with 
finger-rings on them, and these she wrapped 
round her with elaborate care. 

The drive back to Great Mop was more filled 
with glory than anything she had ever experi- 
enced. ‘The wagonette creaked over bare hill- 
tops and plunged downwards into the chequered 
darknesses of unknown winter woods. All the 
stars shook their glittering spears overhead. 
Turning this way and that to look at them, the 
frost pinched her cheeks. 

That evening she asked Mrs. Leak if she 
would lend her some books. From Mrs. Leak’s 
library she chose Mehalah, by the Rev. Sabine 
Baring-Gould, and an anonymous work of in- 
formation called Enquire Within Upon Every- 


114 


sLOLLY WILLOWES 


thing. “Che next morning was fine and sunny. 
She spent it by the parlour fire, reading. When 
she read bits of Mehalah she thought how 
romantic it would be to live in the Essex 
Marshes. From Enguire Within Upon Every- 
thing she learned how gentlemen’s hats if 
plunged in a bath of logwood will come out 
with a dash of respectability, and that ruins are 
best constructed of cork. During the afternoon 
she learned other valuable facts like these, and 
fell asleep. On the following morning she fell 
asleep again, in a beech-wood, curled up in a 
heap of dead leaves. After that she had no 
more trouble. Life becomes simple if one does 
nothing about it. Laura did nothing about any- 
thing for days and days till Mrs. Leak said: 
“We shall soon be having Christmas, miss.” 
Christmas! So it had caught them all again. 
By now the provident Caroline herself was 
suffering the eleventh hour in Oxford Street. 
But here even Christmas was made easy. 
Laura spent a happy afternoon choosing 
presents at the village shop. For Henry she 
bought a bottle of ginger wine, a pair of leather 
gaiters, and some highly recommended tincture 
of sassafras for his winter cough. For Caroline 
she bought an extensive parcel—all the shop 


115 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


had, in fact—of variously coloured rug-wools, 
and a pound’s worth of assorted stamps. For 
Sibyl she bought some tinned fruits, some sugar- 
biscuits, and a pink knitted bed-jacket. For 
Fancy and Marion respectively she bought a 
Swanee flute and a box with Ely Cathedral on 
the lid, containing string, which Mrs. Trumpet 
was very glad to see the last of, as it had been 
forced upon her by a traveller, and had not hit 
the taste of the village. To her great-nephew 
and great-nieces she sent postal orders for one 
guinea, and pink gauze stockings filled with tin 
toys. “These she knew would please, for she 
had always wanted one herself. For Dunlop 
she bought a useful button-hook. Acquaint- 
ances and minor relations were greeted with 
picture postcards, either photographs of the local 
War Memorial Hall and Institute, or a coloured 
view of some sweet-peas with the motto: 
“Kind Thoughts from Great Mop.” A post- 
card of the latter kind was also enclosed with 
each of the presents. 

‘Titus was rather more difficult to suit. But 
by good luck she noticed two heavy glass jars 
such as old-fashioned druggists use. “These 
were not amongst Mrs. Trumpet’s wares—she 
kept linen buttons in the one and horn buttons 


116 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


in the other; but she was anxious to oblige such 
a magnificent customer and quite ready to sell 
her anything that she wanted. She was about to 
empty out the buttons when Laura stopped her. 
“You must keep some for your customers, Mrs. 
‘Trumpet. They may want to put them in 
their Christmas puddings.” Laura was losing 
her head a little with excitement. “But I 
should like to send about three dozen of each 
sort, if you can spare them. Buttons are always 
useful.” 

“Yes, miss. Shall I put in some linen thread 
too?” 

Mrs. ‘Trumpet was a stout, obliging woman. 
She promised to do up all the parcels in thick 
brown paper and send them off three days 
before Christmas. As Laura stepped out of the 
shop in triumph, she exclaimed: “Well, that’s 
done it!” 

For the life of her she could not have said 
in what sense the words were intended. She 
was divided between admiration for her useful 
and well-chosen gifts and delight in affronting 
a kind of good taste which she believed to be 
merely self-esteem. 

Although she had chosen presents with such 
care for her relations, Laura was surprised when 


117 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


counter presents arrived from them. She had 
not thought of them as remembering her. 
Their presents were all of a warm nature; they 
insisted upon that bleakness and draughtiness 
which their senders had foretold. When 
Caroline wrote to thank Laura, she said: 

“T have started to make you a nice warm 
coverlet out of those pretty wools you sent. I 
think it will look very cheerful and variegated. 
I often feel quite worried to think of you upon 
those wind-swept hills. And from all I hear 
you have a great many woods round you, and 
I’m afraid all the decaying leaves must make 
the place damp.” 

Heaping coals of fire was a religious occupa- 
tion. Laura rather admired Caroline for the 
neat turn of the wrist with which she heaped 
these. 

In spite of the general determination of her 
family that she should feel the cold Laura lived 
at Great Mop very comfortably. Mrs. Leak 
was an excellent cook; she attended to her 
lodger civilly and kindly enough, made no com- 
ments, and showed no curiosity. At times 
Laura felt as though she had exchanged one 
Caroline for another. Mrs. Leak was not, 
apparently, a religious woman. ‘There were no 


118 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


texts on her walls, and when Laura asked for 
the loan of a Bible Mrs. Leak took a little time 
to produce it, and blew on the cover before she 
handed it over. But like Caroline, she gave 
the impression that her kingdom was not of 
this world. Laura liked her, and would have 
been glad to be upon less distant terms with her, 
but she did not find it easy to break through 
Mrs. Leak’s reserve. She tried this subject and 
that, but Mrs. Leak did not begin to thaw until 
Laura said something about black-currant tea. 
It seemed that Mrs. Leak shared Laura’s liking 
for distillations. “That evening she remarked 
that the table-beer was of her own brewing, and 
lingered a while with the folded cloth in her 
hand to explain the recipe. After that Laura 
was given every evening a glass of home-made 
wine: dandelion, cowslip, elderberry, ashkey, 
or mangold. By her appreciation and her in- 
quiries she entrapped Mrs. Leak into pausing 
longer and longer before she carried away the 
supper-tray. Before January was out it had 
become an established thing that after placing 
the bedroom candlestick on the cleared table 
Mrs. Leak would sit down and talk for half an 
hour or so. 

‘There was an indoor pleasantness about these 


119 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


times. Through the wall came the sound of 
Mr. Leak snoring in the kitchen. ‘The two 
women sat by the fire, tilting their glasses and 
drinking in small peaceful sips. The lamp- 
light shone upon the tidy room and the polished 
table, lighting topaz in the dandelion wine, 
spilling pools of crimson through the flanks of 
the bottle of plum gin. It shone on the con- 
tented drinkers, and threw their large, close-at- 
hand shadows upon the wall. When Mrs. 
Leak smoothed her apron the shadow solemni- 
fied the gesture as though she were moulding 
an universe. lLaura’s nose and chin were de- 
fined as sharply as the peaks of a holly leaf. 

Mrs. Leak did most of the talking. She 
talked well. She knew a great deal about 
everybody, and she was not content to quit a 
character until she had brought it to life for 
her listener. 

Mrs. Leak’s favorite subject was the Misses 
Larpent, Miss Minnie and Miss Jane. Miss 
Minnie was seventy-three, Miss Jane four years 
younger. Neither of them had known a day’s 
illness, nor any bodily infirmity, nor any relent- 
ing of their faculties. “They would live for 
many years yet, if only to thwart their de- 
bauched middle-aged nephew, the heir to the 

I20 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


estate. Perhaps Miss Willowes had seen Laz- 
zard Court on one of her walks? Yes, Laura 
had seen it, looking down from a hill-top—the 
park where sheep were penned among the 
grouped chestnut trees, the long white house 
with its expressionless fagade—and had heard 
the stable-clock striking a deserted noon. 

The drive of Lazzard Court was five miles 
long from end to end. ‘The house had four- 
teen principal bedrooms and a suite for Royalty. 
Mrs. Leak had been in service at Lazzard 
Court before her marriage; she knew the house 
inside and out, and described it to Laura till 
Laura felt that there was not one of the four- 
teen principal bedrooms which she did not 
know. ‘The blue room, the buff room, the bal- 
cony room, the needle-work room—she had 
slept in them all. Nay, she had awakened in 
the Royal bed, and pulling aside the red 
damask curtains had looked to the window to 
see the sun shining upon the tulip tree. 

No visitors slept in the stately bedrooms now, 
Lazzard Court was very quiet. People in the 
villages, said Mrs. Leak coldly, called Miss 
Minnie and Miss Jane two old screws. Mrs. 
_ Leak knew better. ‘The old ladies spent lordily 
upon their pleasures, and economised elsewhere 

I2I 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


that they might be able to do so. When they 
invited the Bishop to lunch and gave him stewed 
rabbit, blackberry pudding, and the best peaches 
and Madeira that his Lordship was likely to 
taste in his life, he fared no worse and no better 
than they fared themselves. Lazzard Court 
was famous for its racing-stable. ‘To the up- 
keep of this all meaner luxuries were sacrificed 
—suitable bonnets, suitable subscriptions, bed- 
room fires, salmon and cucumber. But the 
stable-yard was like the forecourt of a temple. 
Every morning after breakfast Miss Jane 
would go round the stables and feel the horses’ 
legs, her gnarled old hand with its diamond 
ring slipping over the satin coat. 

Nothing escaped the sisters. ‘Che dairy, the 
laundry, the glass-houses, the poultry-yard, all 
were scrutinised. If any servant were found 
lacking he or she was called before Miss Min- 
nie in the Justice Room. Mrs. Leak had never 
suffered such an interview, but she had seen 
others come away, white-faced, or weeping 
with apron thrown over head. Even the cof- 
fins were made on the estate. Each sister had 
chosen her elm and had watched it felled, with 
sharp words for the woodman when he aimed 
amiss. 

122 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


When Mrs. Leak had given the last touches 
to Miss Minnie and Miss Jane, she made 
Laura’s flesh creep with the story of the doctor 
who took the new house up on the hill. He 
had been a famous doctor in London, but when 
he came to Great Mop no one would have any- 
thing to do with him. It was said he came as 
an interloper, watching for old Dr. Halley to 
die that he might step into his shoes. He grew 
more and more morose in his lonely house, soon 
the villagers said he drank; at last came the 
morning when he and his wife were found 
dead. He had shot her and then himself, so it 
appeared, and the verdict at the inquest was of 
Insanity. ‘The chief witnesses were another 
London doctor, a great man for the brain, who 
had advised his friend to lead a peaceful coun- 
try life; and the maidservant, who had heard 
ranting talk and cries late one evening, and ran 
out of the house in terror, banging the door be- 
hind her, to spend the night with her mother in 
the village. 

After the doctor, Mrs. Leak called up Mr. 
Jones the clergyman. Laura had seen his 
white beard browsing among the tombs. He 
looked like a blessed goat tethered on hallowed 
grass. He lived alone with his books of Latin 

123 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


and Hebrew and his tame owl which he tried te 
persuade to sleep in his bedroom. He had dis- 
missed red-haired Emily, the sexton’s niece, for 
pouring hot water on a mouse. Emily had 
heated the water with the kindest intentions, 
but she was dismissed nevertheless. Mrs. Leak 
made much of this incident, for it was Mr. 
Jones’s only act of authority. In all other ad- 
ministrations he was guided by Mr. Gurdon, the 
clerk. 

Mr. Gurdon’s beard was red and curly 
(Laura knew him by sight also). Fiery down 
covered his cheeks, his eyes were small and 
truculent, and he lived in a small surprised 
cottage near the church. Every morning he 
walked forth to the Rectory to issue his orders 
for the day—this old woman was to be visited 
with soup, that young one with wrath; and 
more manure should be ordered for the Rectory 
cabbages. For Mr. Gurdon was Mr. Jones’s 
gardener, as well as his clerk. 

Mr. Gurdon had even usurped the clergy- 
man’s perquisite of quarrelling with the organ- 
ist. Henry Perry was the organist. He had 
lost one leg and three fingers in a bus accident, 
so there was scarcely any other profession he 
could have taken up. And he had always been 


ere 


LOLLY |) WiILLOW:ES 


fond of playing tunes, for his mother, who was 
a superior widow, had a piano at Rose Cottage. 

Mr. Gurdon said that Henry Perry encour- 
aged the choir boys to laugh at him. After 
church he used to hide behind a yew tree to 
pounce out upon any choir boys who desecrated 
the graves by leaping over them. When he 
caught them he pinched them. Pinches are 
silent: they can be made use of in sacred places 
where smacking would be irreverent. One 
summer Mr. Gurdon told Mr. Jones to forbid 
the choir treat. ‘[hree days later some of the 
boys were playing with a tricycle. ‘They al- 
lowed it to get out of control, and it began to 
run downhill. At the bottom of the hill was a 
sharp turn in the road, and Mr. Gurdon’s cot- 
tage. The tricycle came faster and faster and 
crashed through the fence into Mr. Gurdon, 
who was attending to his lettuces and had his 
back turned. ‘The boys giggled and ran away. 
Their mothers did not take the affair so lightly. 
‘That evening Mr. Gurdon received a large 
seed-cake, two dozen fresh eggs, a packet of 
cigarettes, and other appeasing gifts. Next 


Sunday Mr. Jones in his kind tenor voice an-- : 


nounced that a member of the congregation 
wished to return thanks for mercies lately re- 
125 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


ceived. Mr. Gurdon turned round in his place 
and glared at the choir boys. | 

Much as he disliked Henry Perry, Mr. 
Gurdon had disliked the doctor from London 
even more. ‘The doctor had come upon him 
frightening an old woman in a field, and had 
called him a damned bully and a hypocrite. 
Mr. Gurdon had cursed him back, and swore 
to be even with him. ‘The old woman bore 
her defender no better will. She talked in a 
surly way about her aunt, who was a gipsy and 
able to afflict people with lice by just looking 
at them. 

Laura did not hear this story from Mrs. 
Leak. It was told her some time after by 
Mrs. Trumpet. Mrs. Trumpet hated Mr. 
Gurdon, though she was very civil to him when 
he came into the shop. Few people in the vil- 
lage liked Mr. Gurdon, but he commanded a 
great deal of politeness. Red and burly and to 
be feared, the clerk reminded Laura of a red 
bull belonging to the farmer. In one respect 
he was unlike the bull: Mr. Gurdon was a 
very respectable man. 

Mrs. Leak also told Laura about Mr. and 
Mrs. Ward, who kept the Lamb and Flag; 
about Miss Carloe the dressmaker, who fed a 

126 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


pet hedgehog on bread-and-milk; and about fat 
Mrs. Garland, who Jet lodgings in the summer 
and was always so down at heel and jolly. 
Although she knew so much about her neigh- 
bours, Mrs. Leak was not a sociable woman. 
‘The Misses Larpent, the dead doctor, Mr. 
Jones, Mr. Gurdon, and Miss Carloe—she 
called them up and caused them to pass before 
Laura, but in a dispassionate way, rather like 
the Witch of Endor calling up old Samuel. 
Nor was Great Mop a sociable village, at any 
rate, compared with the villages which Laura 
had known as a girl. Never had she seen so 
little dropping in, leaning over fences, daw- 
dling at the shop or in the churchyard. Little 
laughter came from the taproom of the Lamb 
and Flag. Once or twice she glanced in at the 
window as she passed by and saw the men — 
within sitting silent and abstracted with their 
mugs before them. Even the _bell-ringers 
when they had finished their practice broke up 
with scant adieus, and went silently on their 
way. She had never met country people like 
these before. Nor had she ever known a vil- 
lage that kept such late hours. Lights were 
burning in the cottages till one and two in the 
morning,.and she had been awakened at later 
127 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


hours than those by the sound of passing voices. 
She. could hear quite distinctly, for her window 
was open and faced upon the village street. 
She heard Miss Carloe say complainingly: . 
“Tt’s all very well for you young ones. But 
my old bones ache so, it’s a wonder how I get 
home!” Then she heard the voice of red- 
haired Emily say: “No bones so nimble as old 
bones, Miss Carloe, when it comes to—” and 
then a voice unknown to Laura said ‘‘Hush’’; 
and she heard no more, for a cock crew. An- 
other night, some time after this, she heard 
some one playing a mouth-organ. ‘The music 
came from far off, it sounded almost as if it 
were being played out of doors. She lit a 
candle and looked at her watch—it was half- 
past three. She got out of bed and listened at 
the window; it was a dark night, and the hills 
rose up like ascreen. ‘Ihe noise of the mouth- 
organ came wavering and veering on the wind. 
A drunk man, perhaps? Yet what drunk man 
would play on so steadily? She lay awake for 
an hour or more, half puzzled, half lulled by 
the strange music, that never stopped, that never 
varied, that seemed to have become part of the - 
air. 

Next day she asked Mrs. Leak what this 
strange music could be. Mrs. Leak said that 

128 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


young Billy Thomas was distracted with tooth- 
ache. He could not sleep, and played for hours 
nightly upon his mouth-organ to divert himself 
from the pain. On Wednesday the tooth- 
drawer would come to Barleighs, and young 
Billy Thomas would be put out of his agony. 
Laura was sorry for the sufferer, but she ad- 
mired the circumstances. ‘The highest flights 
of her imagination had not risen to more than 
a benighted drunk. Young Billy Thomas had 
a finer invention than she. 

After a few months she left off speculating 
about the villagers. She admitted that there 
was something about them which she could not 
fathom, but she was content to remain outside 
the secret, whatever it was. She had not come 
to Great Mop to concern herself with the hearts 
of men. Let her stray up the valleys, and 
rest in the leafless woods that looked so 
warm with their core of fallen red leaves, and 
find out her own secret, if she had one; 
with autumn it might come back to question 
her. She wondered. She thought not. She 
felt that nothing could ever again disturb her 
peace. Wherever she strayed the hills folded 
themselves round her like the fingers of a 
hand. 

About this time she did an odd thing. In 

129 


LO ke WL EON Wiis 


her wanderings she had found a disused well. 
It was sunk at the side of a green lane, and 
grass and bushes had grown up around its low 
rim, almost to conceal it; the wooden frame 
was broken and mouldered, ropes and pulleys 
had long ago been taken away, and the water 
was sunk far down, only distinguishable as an 
uncertain reflection of the sky. Here, one eve- 
ning, she brought her guide-book and her map. 
Pushing aside the bushes she sat down upon the 
low rim of the well. It was a still, mild eve- 
ning towards the end of February, the birds 
were singing, there was a smell of growth in 
the air, the light lingered in the fields as though 
it were glad to linger. Looking into the well 
she watched the reflected sky grow dimmer; 
and when she raised her eyes the gathering 
darkness of the landscape surprised her. ‘The 
time had come. She took the guide-book and 
the map and threw them in. 

She heard the disturbed water sidling against 
the walls of the well. She scarcely knew what 
she had done, but she knew that she had done 
rightly, whether it was that she had sacrificed 
to the place, or had cast herself upon its mer- 
cies—content henceforth to know no more of ~ 
it than did its own children. 

130 


LOLLY WiLLoweEs 


As she reached the village she saw a group 
of women standing by the milestone. ‘They 
were silent and abstracted as usual. When she 
greeted them they returned her greeting, but 
they said nothing among themselves. After 
she had gone by they turned as of one accord 
and began to walk up the field path towards 
the wood. ‘They were going to gather fuel, 
she supposed... To-night their demeanour did 
not strike her as odd. She felt at one with 
them, an inhabitant like themselves, and she 
would gladly have gone with them up towards 
the wood. If they were different from other 
people, why shouldn’t they be? They saw 
little of the world. Great Mop stood by itself 
at the head of the valley, five miles from the 
main road, and cut off by the hills from the 
other villages. It had a name for being differ- 
ent from other places. “The man who had 
driven Laura home from The Reason Why had 
said: “It’s not often that a wagonette is seen 
at Great Mop. It’s an out-of-the-way place, 
if ever there was one. ‘There’s not such an- 
other village in Buckinghamshire for out-of- 
the-way-ness. Well may it be called Great 
Mop, for there’s never a Little Mop that [ve 
heard of.” 


131 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


People so secluded as the inhabitants of Great 
Mop would naturally be rather silent, and keep. 
themselves close. So Laura thought, and Mr. 
Saunter was of the same opinion. 

Mr. Saunter’s words had weight, for he 
spoke seldom. He was a serious, brown young 
man, who after the war had refused to go back 
to his bank in Birmingham. He lived in a 
wooden hut which he had put up with his own 
hands, and kept a poultry-farm. 

Laura first met Mr. Saunter when she was 
out walking, early one darkish, wet, January 
morning. ‘The lane was muddy; she picked 
her way, her eyes to the ground. She did not 
notice Mr. Saunter until she was quite close to 
him. He was standing bareheaded in the rain. 
His look was sad and gentle, it reflected the 
mood of the weather, and several dead white 
hens dangled from his hands. Laura ex- 
claimed, softly, apologetically. This young 
man was so perfectly of a piece with his sur- 
roundings that she felt herself to be an in- 
truder. She was about to turn back when his 
glance moved slowly towards her. “Badger,” 
he said; and smiled in an explanatory fashion. | 
Laura knew at once that he had been careless 
and had left the henhouse door unfastened. 

132 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


She took pains that no shade of blame should 
mix itself with her condolences. She did not 
even blame the badger. She knew that this 
was a moment for nothing but kind words, and 
not too many of them. 

Mr. Saunter was grateful. He invited her 
to come and see his birds. Side by side they 
turned in silence through a field gate and 
walked into Mr. Saunter’s field. Bright birds 
were on the sodden grass. As he went by they | 
hurried into their pens, expecting to be fed. 
“If you would care to come in,” said Mr. 
Saunter, “I should like to make you a cup of 
teas” | 

Mr. Saunter’s living-room was very untidy 
and homelike. A basket of stockings lay on 
the table. Laura wondered if she might offer 
to help Mr. Saunter with his mending. But 
after he had made the tea, he took up a stocking 
and began to darn it. He darned much better 
than she did. 

As she went home again she fell to wonder- 
ing what animal Mr. Saunter resembled. But 
in the end she decided that he resembled no ani- 
mal except man. ‘Till now, Laura had rejected 
the saying that man is the noblest work of na- 
ture. Half an hour with Mr. Saunter showed 


133 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


her that the saying was true. So had Adam 
been the noblest work of nature, when he 
walked out among the beasts, sole overseer of 
the garden, intact, with all his ribs about him, 
his equilibrium as yet untroubled by Eve. She 
had misunderstood the saying merely because 
she had not happened to meet a man before. 
Perhaps, like other noble works, man is rare. 
Perhaps there is only one of him at a time: 
first Adam; now Mr. Saunter. If that were 
the case, she was lucky to have met him. ‘This 
also was the result of coming to Great Mop. 

So much did Mr. Saunter remind Laura of 
Adam that he made her feel like Eve—for she 
was petitioned by an unladylike curiosity. She 
asked Mrs. Leak about him. Mrs. Leak could 
tell her nothing that was not already known to 
her, except that young Billy Thomas went up 
there every day on his bicycle to lend Mr. 
Saunter a hand. Laura would not stoop to 
question young Billy Thomas. She fought 
against her curiosity, and the spring came to her 
aid. , 

This new year was changing her whole con- 
ception of spring. She had thought of it as a 
denial of winter, a green spur that thrust 
through a tyrant’s rusty armour. Now she 


134 


LOLLY WILLOWES 

saw it as something filial, gently unlacing the 
helm of the old warrior and comforting his 
rough cheek. In February came a spell of fine 
weather. She spent whole days sitting in the 
woods, where the wood-pigeons moaned for 
pleasure on the boughs. Sometimes two cock- 
birds would tumble together in mid air, shriek- 
ing, and buffeting with their wings, and then 
would fly back to the quivering boughs and 
nurse the air into peace again. All round her 
the sap was rising up. She laid her cheek 
against a tree and shut her eyes to listen. She 
expected to hear the tree drumming like a 
telegraph pole. 

It was so warm in the woods that she forgot 
that she sat there for shelter. But though the 
wind blew lightly, it blew from the east. In 
March the wind went round to the south-west. 
It brought rain. ‘The bright, cold fields were 
dimmed and warm to walk in now. Like em- 
bers the wet beech-leaves smouldered in the 
woods. 

All one day the wind had risen, and late in 
the evening it called her out. She went up to 
the top of Cubbey Ridge, past the ruined wind- 
mill that clattered with its torn sails. When 
she had come to the top of the Ridge she 


N39 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


stopped, with difficulty holding herself upright. 
She felt the wind swoop down close to the 
earth. [he moon was out hunting overhead, 
her pack of black and white hounds ranged over 
the sky. Moon and wind and clouds hunted an 
invisible quarry. “The wind routed through the 
woods. Laura from the hill-top heard the dif- 
ferent voices. “The spent gusts left the beech- 
hangers throbbing like sea caverns through 
which the wave had passed; the fir plantation 
seemed to chant some never-ending rune. 
Listening to these voices, another voice came 
to her ear—the far-off pulsation of a goods 
train labouring up a steep cutting. It was 
scarcely audible, more perceptible as feeling 
than as sound, but by its regularity it dominated 
all the other voices. It seemed to come nearer 
and nearer, to inform her like the drumming 
of blood in her ears. She began to feel de- 
fenceless, exposed to the possibility of an over- 
whelming terror. She listened intently, trying 
not to think. ‘Though the noise came from an 
ordinary goods train, no amount of reasoning 
could stave off this terror. She must yield her- 
self, yield up all her attention, if she would 
escape. It was a wicked sound. It expressed 
something eternally outcast and reprobated by 


136 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


_ man, stealthily trafficking by night, unseen in 
the dark clefts of the hills. Loud, separate, 
and abrupt, each pant of the engine trampled 
down her wits. The wind and the moon and 
the ranging cloud pack were not the only 
hunters abroad that night: something else was 
hunting among the hills, hunting slowly, de- 
liberately, sure of its quarry. 

Suddenly she remembered the goods yard at 
Paddington, and all her thoughts slid together 
again like a pack of hounds that have picked up 
the scent. ‘They streamed faster and faster; 
she clenched her hands and prayed as when a 
child she had prayed in the hunting-field. 

- In the goods yard at Paddington she had 
almost pounced on the clue, the clue to the 
secret country of her mind. ‘The country was 
desolate and half-lit, and she walked there 
alone, mistress of it, and mistress, too, of the 
terror that roamed over the blank fields and 
haunted round her. Here was country just so 
desolate and half-lt. She was alone, just as in 
her dreams, and the terror had come to keep 
her company, and crouched by her side, half 
in fawning, half in readiness to pounce. All 
this because of a goods train that laboured up a 
cutting. What was this cabal of darkness, 


¥37 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


suborning her own imagination to plot against 
her! What were these iron hunters doing near 
mournful, ever-weeping Paddington? 

“Now! Now!” said the moon, and plunged 
towards her through the clouds. 

Baffled, she stared back at the moon and 
shook her head. For a moment it had seemed 
as though the clue were found, but it had slid 
through her hands again. The train had 
reached the top of the cutting, with a shriek of 
delight it began to pour itself downhill. She 
smiled. It amused’ her to suppose it loaded 
with cabbages. Arrived at Paddington, the 
cabbages would be diverted to Covent Garden. 
But inevitably, and with all the augustness of 
due course, they would reach their bourne at 
Apsley Terrace. “They would shed all their 
midnight devilry in the pot, and be served up 
to Henry and Caroline very pure and vegetable. 
“Lovely! lovely!” she said, and began to 
descend the hill, for the night was cold. 
Though her secret had eluded her again, she 
did not mind. She knew that this time she had 
come nearer to catching it than ever before. 
If it were attainable she would run it to earth 
here, sooner or later. Great Mop was the 
likeliest place to find it. 

138 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


The village was in darkness; it had gone to 
bed early, as good villages should. Only Miss 
Carloe’s window was alight. Kind Miss Car- 
loe, she would sit up till all hours tempting her 
hedgehog with bread-and-milk. Hedgehogs 
are nocturnal animals; they go out for walks 
at night, grunting, and shoving out their black 
snouts. “Thrice the brindled cat hath mewed; 
Thrice, and once the hedgepig whined. Har- 
per cries, ‘’ Tis time, ’tis time,’”? She found 
the key under the half-brick, and let herself 
in very quietly. Only sleep sat up for her, 
Waiting in the hushed house. Sleep took her 
by the hand, and convoyed her up the narrow 
stairs. She fell asleep almost as her head 
touched the pillow. 

By the next day all this seemed very ordi- 
nary. She had gone out on a windy night and 
heard a goods train. “There was nothing re- 
markable in that. It would have been a con- 
siderable adventure in London, but it was 
nothing in the Chilterns. Yet she retained an 
odd feeling of respect for what had happened, 
as though it had laid some command upon her 
that waited to be interpreted and obeyed. She 
thought it over, and tried to make sense of it. 
If it pointed to anything it pointed to Padding- 


139 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


ton. She did what she could; she wrote and 
invited Caroline to spend a day at Great Mop. 
She did not suppose that this was the right in- 
terpretation, but she could think of no other. 

All the birds were singing as Laura went 
down the lane to meet Caroline’s car. It was 
almost like summer, nothing could be more 
fortunate, Caroline was dressed in sensible 
tweeds. “It was raining when I left Lon- 
don,” she said, and glanced severely at Laura’s 
cotton gown. 

“Was it?” said Laura. “It hasn’t rained 
here.” She stopped. She looked carefully at 
the blue sky. “There was not a cloud to be 
seen. “Perhaps it will rain later on,” she 
added. Caroline also looked at the sky, and 
said: “Probably.” 

Conversation was a little difficult, for Laura 
did not know how much she was still in dis- 
grace. She asked after everybody in a rather 
guilty voice, and heard how emphatically they 
all throve, and what a pleasant, cheerful winter 
they had all spent. After that came the dis- 
tance from Wickendon and the hour of de- 
parture. In planning the conduct of the day, 
Laura had decided to keep the church for after 
lunch. Before lunch she would show Caro- 

140 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


line the view. She had vaguely allotted an 
hour and a half to the view, but it took scarcely 
twenty minutes. At least, that was the time 
it took walking up to the windmill and down 
again. [he view had taken no time at all. 
It was a clear day, and everything that could 
be seen was perceptible at the first glance. 
Caroline was so stoutly equipped for country 
walking that Laura had not the heart to drag 
her up another hill. ‘They visited the church 
instead. “The church was more successful. 
Caroline sank on her knees and prayed. ‘This 
gave Laura an opportunity to look round, for 
she had not been inside the church before. It 
was extremely narrow, and had windows upon 
the south side only, so that it looked like a holy 
corridor. Caroline prayed for some time, and 
Laura made the most of it. Presently she was 


- able to lead Caroline down the corridor, mur- 


muring: “That window was presented in 1901. 
There is rather a nice brass in this corner. 
That bit of carving is old, it is the Wise and 
the Foolish Virgins. ‘Take care of the step.” 

One foolish Virgin pleased Laura as being 
particularly lifelike. She stood a little apart 
from the group, holding a flask close to her 
ear, and shaking it. During lunch Laura felt 


I4I 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


that her stock of oil, too, was running very 
low. But it was providentially renewed, for 
soon after lunch a perfect stranger fell off a 
bicycle just outside Mrs. Leak’s door and 
sprained her ankle. Laura and Caroline leapt 
up to succour her, and then there was a great 
deal of cold compress and hot tea and anima- 
tion. The perfect stranger was a Secretary to 
a Guild. She asked Caroline if she did not 
think Great Mop a delightful nook, and Caro- 
line cordially agreed. “They went on discover- 
ing Committees in common till tea-time, and 
soon after went off together in Caroline’s car. 
Just as Caroline stepped into the car she asked 
Laura if she had met any nice people in the 
neighbourhood. 

“No. There aren’t any nice people,”’ said 
Laura. Wondering if the bicycle would stay 
like that, twined so casually round the driver’s 
neck, she had released her attention one minute 
too soon. 

As far as she knew this was her only slip 
throughout the day. It was a pity. But 
Caroline would soon forget it; she might not 
even have heard it, for the Secretary was 
talking loudly about Homes of Rest at the 
same moment. Still, it was a pity. She might 

142 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


have remembered Mr. Saunter, though perhaps 
she could not have explained him satisfactorily 
in the time. 

She turned and walked slowly through the 
fields towards the poultry-farm. She could 
not settle down to complete solitude so soon 
after Caroline’s departure. She would decline 
gradually, using Mr. Saunter as an intermedi- 
ate step. He was feeding his poultry, going 
from pen to pen with a zinc wheelbarrow and 
a large wooden spoon. ‘The birds flew round 
him; he had continually to stop and fend them 
off like a swarm of large midges. Sometimes 
he would grasp a specially bothering bird and 
throw it back into the pen as though it were a 
ball. She leant on the gate and watched him. 
This young man who had been a _ bank-clerk 
and a soldier walked with the easy, slow strides 
of a born countryman; he seemed to possess 
the earth with each step. No doubt but he 
was like Adam. And she, watching him from 
above—for the field sloped down from the gate 
to the pens—was like God. Did God, after 
casting out the rebel angels and before settling 
down to the peace of a heaven unpeopled of 
contradiction, use Adam as an intermediate 
step? 

143 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


On his way back to the hut, Mr. Saunter 
noticed Laura. He came up and leant on his 
side of the gate. Though the sun had gone 
down, the air was still warm, and a disem- 
bodied daylight seemed to weigh upon the land- 
scape like a weight of sleep. The birds which 
had sung all day now sang louder than ever. 

“Hasn’t it been a glorious day?” said Mr. 
Saunter. 

“T have had my sister-in-law down,” Laura 
answered. “She lives in London.” 

“My people,” said Mr. Saunter, “all live in 
the Midlands.” . 
“Or in Australia,” he added after a pause. 

Mr. Saunter, seen from above, walking 
among his flocks and herds—for even hens 
seemed ennobled into something Biblical by 
their relation to him—was an impressive figure. 
Mr. Saunter leaning on the gate was a pleas- 
ant, unaffected young man enough, but no more. 
Quitting him, Laura soon forgot him as com- 
pletely as she had forgotten Caroline. Caro- 
line was a tedious bluebottle; Mr. Saunter a 
gentle, furry brown moth; but she could brush 
off one as easily as the other. 

Laura even forgot that she had invited the 
moth to settle again; to come to tea. It was 


144 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


only by chance that she had stayed indoors that 
afternoon, making currant scones. “To amuse 
herself she had cut the dough into likenesses of 
the village people. Curious developments took 
place in the baking. Miss Carloe’s hedgehog 
_ had swelled until it was almost as large as its 
mistress. “The dough had run into it, leaving 
a great hole in Miss Carloe’s side. Mr. Jones 
had a lump on his back, as though he were 
carrying the Black Dog in a bag; and a fancy 
portrait of Miss Larpent in her elegant youth 
and a tight-fitting sweeping amazon had 
warped and twisted until it was more like a 
enarled thorn tree than a woman. 

Laura felt slightly ashamed of her freak. 
It was unkind to play these tricks with her 
neighbours’ bodies. But Mr. Saunter ate the 
strange shapes without comment, quietly split- 
ting open the villagers and buttering them. 
He told her that he would soon lose the services 
of young Billy Thomas, who was going to 
Lazzard Court as a footman. 

“I shouldn’t think young Billy Thomas 
would make much of a footman,” said Laura. 

“I don’t know,” he answered consideringly. 
““He’s very good at standing still.” 

Laura had brought her sensitive conscience 


145 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


into the country with her, just as she had 
brought her umbrella, though so far she had 
not remembered to use either. Now the con- 
science gave signs of life. Mr. Saunter was so 
nice, and had eaten up those derisive scones, in- 
nocently under the impression that they had 
been prepared for him; he had come with his 
gift of eggs, all kindness and forethought 
while she had forgotten his existence; and now 
he was getting up to go, thanking her and 
afraid that he had stayed too long. She had 
acted unworthily by this young man, so digni- 
fied and unassuming; she must do something to 
repair the slight she had put upon him in her 
own mind. She offered herself as a substitute 
for young Billy Thomas until Mr. Saunter 
could find some one else. 

“TI don’t know anything about hens,” she 
admitted. “But I am fond of animals, and I 
am very obedient.” 

It was agreed that she might go on the fol- 
lowing day to help him with the trap-nesting, 
and see how she liked it. 

At first Mr. Saunter would not allow her to 
do more than walk round with him upon planks 
specially put down to save her from the muddy 
places, pencil the eggs, and drink tea after- 

146 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


wards. But she came so punctually and 
showed such eagerness that as time went on she 
persuaded him into allowing her a considerable 
share in the work. 

‘There was much to do, for it was a busy 
time of year. “The incubators had fulfilled 
their time; Laura learnt how to lift out the 
newly-hatched chicks, damp, almost lifeless 
from their birth-throes, and pack them into 
baskets. A few hours after the chicks were 
lump and fluffy. They looked like bunches of 
primroses in the moss-lined baskets. 

Besides mothering his chicks Mr. Saunter 
was busy with a great re-housing of the older 
birds. [his was carried out after sundown, 
for the birds were sleepy then, and easier to 
deal with. If moved by day they soon re- 
volted, and went back to their old pens. Even 
as it was there were always a few sticklers, 
roosting uncomfortably among the newcomers, 
or standing disconsolately before their old 
homes, closed against them. 

Laura liked this evening round best of all. 
The April twilights were marvellously young 
and still. A slender moon soared in the green 
sky; the thick spring grass was heavy with dew, 
and the earth darkened about her feet while 


147 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


overhead it still seemed quite light. Mr. 
Saunter would disappear into the henhouse, a 
protesting squawking and scuffing would be 
heard; then he would emerge with hens under 
either arm. He showed Laura how to carry 
them, two at a time, their breasts in her hands, 
their wings held fast between her arm and her 
side. She would tickle the warm breasts, warm 
and surprisingly bony with quills under the soft 
plumage, and make soothing noises. 

At first she felt nervous with the strange 
burden, so meek and inanimate one moment, so 
shrewish the next, struggling and beating with 
strong freed wings. However many birds Mr. 
Saunders might be carrying, he was always able 
to relieve her of hers. Immediately the terma- 
gant would subside, tamed by the large sure 
grasp, meek as a dove, with rigid dangling legs, 
and head turning sadly from side to side. 

Laura never became as clever with the birds 
as Mr. Saunter. But when she had overcome 
her nervousness she managed them well enough 
to give her a great deal of pleasure. They 
nestled against her, held fast in the crook of 
her arm, while her fingers probed among the 
soft feathers and rigid quills of their breasts. 
She liked to feel their acquiescence, their de- 

148 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


pendence upon her. She felt wise and potent. 
She remembered the henwife in the fairy-tales, 
she understood now why kings and queens 
resorted to the henwife in their difficulties. 
The henwife held their destinies in the crook 
of her arm, and hatched the future in her 
apron. She was sister to the spaewife, and 
close cousin to the witch, but she practised her 
art under cover of henwifery; she was not, like 
her sister and her cousin, a professional. She 
lived unassumingly at the bottom of the king’s 
garden, wearing a large white apron and very 
possibly her husband’s cloth cap; and when she 
saw the king and queen coming down the 
gravel path she curtseyed reverentially, and pre- 
tended it was the eggs they had come about. 
She was easier of approach than the spaewife, 
who sat on a creepie and stared at the smoulder- 
ing peats till her eyes were red and unseeing; 
or the witch, who lived alone in the wood, her 
cottage window all grown over with brambles. 
But though she kept up this pretence of homeli- 
ness she was not inferior in skill to the profes- 
sionals. Even the pretence of homeliness was 
not quite so homely as it might seem. Laura 
knew that the Russian witches live in small 
huts mounted upon three giant hens’ legs, all 


149 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


yellow and scaly. The legs can go; when the 
witch desires to move her dwelling the legs 
stalk through the forest, clattering against the 
trees, and printing long scars upon the snow. 

Following Mr. Saunter up and down be- 
tween the pens, Laura almost forgot where and 
who she was, so completely had she merged 
her personality into the henwife’s. She walked 
back along the rutted track and down the steep 
lane as obliviously as though she were flitting 
home on a broomstick. All through April she 
helped Mr. Saunter. They were both sorry 
when a new boy applied for the job and her 
duties came to an end. She knew no more of 
Mr. Saunter at the close of this association than 
she had known at its beginning. It could 
scarcely be said even that she lked him any 
better, for from their first meeting she had 
liked him extremely. ‘Time had assured the 
hiking, and that was all. So well assured was 
it, that she felt perfectly free to wander away 
and forget him once more, certain of finding 
him as likeable and well liked as before when- 
ever she might choose to return. 

During her first months at Great Mop the 
moods of the winter landscape and the renew- 
ing of spring had taken such hold of her imagi- 

150 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


nation that she thought no season could be more 
various and lovely. She had even written a 
slightly precious letter to Titus—for somehow 
correspondence with Titus was. always rather 
attentive—declaring her belief that the cult of 
the summer months was a piece of cockney ob- 
tuseness, a taste for sweet things, and a prefer- 
ence for dry grass to strew their egg-shells 
upon. But with the first summer days and the 
first cowslips she learnt better. She had known 
that there would be cowslips in May; from the 
day she first thought of Great Mop she had 
promised them to herself. She had meant to 
find them early and watch the yellow blossoms 
unfolding upon the milky green stems. But 
they were beforehand with her, or she had 
watched the wrong fields. _When she walked 
into the meadow it was bloomed over with cow- 
slips, powdering the grass in variable plenty, 
here scattered, there clustered, innumerable as 
the stars in the Milky Way. 

She knelt down among them and laid her 
face close to their fragrance. The weight of 
all her unhappy years seemed for a moment to 
weigh her bosom down to the earth; she trem- 
bled, understanding for the first time how 
miserable she had been; and in another moment 


15! 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


she was released. It was all gone, it could 
never be again, and never had been. ‘Tears of 
thankfulness ran-down her face. With every 
breath she drew, the scent of the cowslips 
flowed in and absolved her. 

She was changed, and knew it. She was 
humbler, and more simple. She ceased to 
triumph mentally over her tyrants, and rallied 
herself no longer with the consciousness that 
she had outraged them by coming to live at 
Great Mop. ‘The amusement she had drawn 
from their disapproval was a slavish remnant, 
a derisive dance on the north bank of the Ohio. 
‘There was no question of forgiving them. 
She had not, in any case, a forgiving nature; 
and the injury they had done her was not done 
by them. If she were to start forgiving she 
must needs forgive Society, the Law, the 
Church, the History of Europe, the Old ‘Testa- 
ment, great-great-aunt Salome and her prayer- 
book, the Bank of England, Prostitution, the 
Architect of Apsley Terrace, and half a dozen 
other useful props of civilisation. All she 
could do was to go on forgetting them. But 
now she was able to forget them without flout- 
ing them by her forgetfulness, 

Throughout May and June and the first 

152 


LOLLY WILLOWES 
fortnight of July she lived in perfect idleness 


and contentment, growing every day more 
freckled and more rooted in peace. On July 
17th she was disturbed by a breath from the 
world. ‘Titus came down to see her. It was 
odd to be called Aunt Lolly again. ‘Titus did 
not use the term often; he addressed his friends 
of both sexes and his relations of all ages as 
My Dear; but Aunt Lolly slipped out now and 
again. 

‘There was no need to show Titus the inside 
of the church. ‘There was no need even to 
take him up to the windmill and show him the 
view. He did all that for himself, and got it 
over before breakfast—for ‘Titus breakfasted 
for three mornings at Great Mop. He had 
come for the day only, but he was too pleased 
to go back. He was his own master now, he 
had rooms in Bloomsbury and did not need 
even to send off a telegram. Mrs. Garland 
who let lodgings in the summer was able to 
oblige him with a bedroom, full of pincushions 
and earwigs and marine photographs; and Mrs. 
‘Trumpet gave him all the benefit of all the 
experience he invoked in the choice of a tooth- 
brush. For three days he sat about with 
Laura, and talked of his intention to begin 


153 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


brewing immediately. He had refused to visit 
Italy with his mother—he had rejected sev- 
eral flattering invitations from editors—because 
brewing appealed to him more than anything 
else in the world. ‘This, he said, was the last 
night out before the wedding. On his return 
to Bloomsbury he intended to let his rooms to 
an amiable Mahometan, and to apprentice him- 
self to his family brewery until he had learnt 
the family trade. . 

Laura gave him many messages to Lady 
Place. It was clear before her in an early 
morning light. She could exactly recall the 
smell of the shrubbery, her mother flowing 
across the croquet lawn, her father’s voice as he 
called up the dogs. She could see herself, too: 
her old self, for her present self had no part 
in the place. She did not suppose she would 
ever return there, although she was glad that 
‘Titus was faithful. 

‘Titus departed. He wrote her a letter from 
Bloomsbury, saying that he had struck a good 
bargain with the Mahometan, and was off to 
Somerset. Ten days later she heard from 
Sibyl that he was coming to live at Great Mop. 
She had scarcely time to assemble her feelings 
about this before he was arrived. 


154 


Part 3 


T was the third week in August. The 
weather was sultiy; day after day Laura 
heard the village people telling each other that 
there was thunder in the air. Every evening 
they stood in the village street, looking up- 
wards, and the cattle stood waiting in the fields. 
But the storm delayed. It hid behind the hills, 
biding its time. | 
Laura had spent the afternoon in a field, a 
field of unusual form, for it was triangular. 
On two sides it was enclosed by woodland, and 
because of this it was already darkening into a 
premature twilight, as though it were a room. 
She had been there for hours. ‘Though it was 
sultry, she could not sit still. She walked up 
and down, turning savagely when she came te 
the edge of the field. Her lmbs were tired, 
and she stumbled over the flints and matted 
couch-grass. “Throughout the long afternoon 
a stock-dove had cooed in the wood. “Cool, 
cool, cool,” it said, delighting in its green 
bower. Now it had ceased, and there was no 


155 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


life in the woods. ‘The sky was covered with a 
thick uniform haze. No ray of the declining 
sun broke through it, but the whole heavens 
were beginning to take on a dull, brassy pallor. 
The long afternoon was ebbing away, stealth- 
ily, impassively, as though it were dying under 
an anaesthetic. 

Laura had not listened to the stock-dove; 
she had not seen the haze thickening overhead. 
She walked up and down in despair and rebel- 
lion. She walked slowly, for she felt the 
weight of her chains. Once more they had 
been fastened upon her. She had worn them 
for many years, acquiescently, scarcely feeling 
their weight. Now she felt it. And, with 
their weight, she felt their familiarity, and the 
familiarity was worst of all. ‘Titus had seen 
her starting out. He had cried: ‘Where are 
you off to, Aunt Lolly? Wait a minute, and 
I'll come too.” She had feigned not to hear 
him and had walked on. She had not turned 
her head until she was out of the village, she 
expected at every moment to hear him come 
bounding up behind her. Had he done so, she 
thought she would have turned round and 
snarled at him. For she wanted, oh! how 
much she. wanted, to be left alone for once. 


156 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


Even when she felt pretty sure that she had 
escaped she could not profit by her solitude, for 
Titus’s voice still jangled on her nerves. 
“Where are you off to, Aunt Lolly? Wait a 
minute, and I'll come too.” She heard his 
very tones, and heard intensely her own silence 
that had answered him. ‘Too flustered to notice 
where she was going, she had followed a chance 
track until she found herself in this field where 
she had never been before. Here the track 
ended, and here she stayed. 

‘The woods rose up before her like barriers. 
On the third side of the field was a straggling 
hedge; along it sprawled a thick bank of bur- 
~ docks, growing with malignant profusion. It 
was an unpleasant spot. Bitterly she said to 
herself: ‘“‘Well, perhaps he’ll leave me alone 
here,’ and was glad of its unpleasantness. 
_ Titus could have all the rest: the green mead- 
ows, the hill-tops, the: beech-woods dark and 
resonant as the inside of a sea-shell. He could 
walk in the greenest meadow and have domin- 
jon over it like a bull. He could loll his 
“great body over the hill-tops, or rout silence out 
of the woods. ‘They were hers, they were all 
hers, but she would give them all up to him 
and keep only this dismal field, and these coarse 


157 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


weeds growing out of an uncleansed soil. Any 
terms to be rid of him. But even on these 
terms she could not be rid of him, for all the 
afternoon he had been present in her thoughts, 
and his voice rang in her ears as distinctly as 
ever: “Wait a minute, and IT’ll come with 
you.” She had not waited; but, nevertheless, 
he had come. 

Actually, she knew—and the knowledge 
smote her—Titus, seeing her walk by unheed- 
ing, had picked up his book again and read on, 
reading slowly, and slowly drawing at his pipe, 
careless, intent, and satisfied. Perhaps he still 
sat by the open window. Perhaps he had wan- - 
dered about, taking his book with him, and 
now was lying in the shade, still reading, or 
sleeping with his nose pressed into the grass, or 
with idle patience inveigling an ant to climb up 
a dry stalk. For this was Titus, Titus who — 
had always been her friend. She had believed 
that she loved him; even when she heard that 
he was coming to live at Great Mop she had 
half thought that it might be rather nice to have 
him there. “Dearest Lolly,” Sibyl had writ- 
ten from Italy, “I feel quite reconciled to this 
wild scheme of Tito’s, since you will be there 
to keep an eye on him. Men are so helpless. 


158 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


Tito is so impracticable. A regular artist,” 
etc. | 

The helpless artist had arrived, and immedi- 
ately upon his arrival walked out to buy beer 
and raspberries. Sibyl might feel perfectly 
reconciled. No cat could jump into the most 
comfortable armchair more unerringly than 
Titus. “Such a nice young gentleman,” said 
Mrs. Garland, smoothing his pyjamas with a 
voluptuous hand. “Such a nice young gentle- 
man,” said Miss Carloe, rubbing her finger over 
the milling of the new florin she received for 
the raspberries. “Such a nice young gentle- 
man, said Mrs. Trumpet at the shop, and 
Mrs. Ward at the Lamb and Flag. All the 
white-aproned laps opened to dandle him. 
The infant Bacchus walked down the village 
street with his beer and his raspberries, bowing 
graciously to all Laura’s acquaintances. ‘That 
evening he supped with her and talked about 
Fuseli. Fuseli—pronounced Foozley—was a 
neglected figure of the utmost importance. 
The pictures, of course, didn’t matter: Titus 
supposed there were some at the Tate. It was 
Fuseli the man, Fuseli the sign of his times, 
etc., that ‘Titus was going to write about. It 
had been the ambition of his life to write a 


159 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


book about Fuseli, and his first visit to Great 
Mop convinced him that this was the perfect 
place to write it in. The secret, Titus said, of 
writing a good book was to be cut off from ac- 
cess to the reading-room of the British Mu- 
seum. laura said a little pettishly that if that 
were all Titus might have stayed in Blooms- 
bury, and written his book on Good Fri- 
days. ‘Titus demurred. Suppose he ran out of 
ink? No! Great Mop was the place. “To- 
morrow,” he added, “‘you must take me around 
and show me all your footpaths.” 

He left his pipe and tobacco pouch on the 
mantelpiece. They lay there like the orb 
and sceptre of an usurping monarch. Laura 
dreamed that night that Fuseli had arrived at 
Mr. Saunter’s poultry-farm, killed the hens, 
and laid out the field as a golf-course. 

She heard a great deal about Fuseli during 
the next few days, while she was obediently 
showing Titus all her footpaths. It was. hot, 
so they walked in the woods. ‘The paths were 
narrow, there was seldom room for two to 
walk abreast, so Titus generally went in front, 
projecting his voice into the silence. She dis- 
liked these walks; she felt ashamed of his 
company; she thought the woods saw her with 

‘ 160 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


him and drew back scornfully to let them pass 
by together. | 

Titus was more tolerable in the village 
street. Indeed, at first she was rather proud of 
her nephew’s success. After a week he knew 
everybody, and knew them far better than she 
did. He passed from the bar-parlour of the 
Lamb and Flag to the rustic woodwork of the 
rectors lawn. He subscribed to the bowling- 
green fund, he joined the cricket club, he en- 
gaged himself to give readings at the Institute 
during the winter evenings. He was invited 
to become a bell-ringer, and to read the lessons. 
He burgeoned with projects for Co-operative 
Blue Beverens, morris-dancing, performing 
Coriolanus with the Ancient Foresters, getting 
Henry Wappenshaw to come down and paint a 
village sign, inviting Pandora Williams and her 
rebeck for the Barleighs Flower Show. He 
congratulated Laura upon having discovered so 
unspoilt an example of the village community. 
After the first fortnight he was less exuber- 
ant in the growth of his vast fronds. He was 
growing downwards instead, rooting into the 
soil. He began his book, and promised to 
stand godfather to the roadman’s next child. 
When they went for walks together he would 

161 


LOLLY WILLOWES 
sometimes fall silent, turning his head from 
side to side to browse the warm scent of a_ 
clover field. Once, as they stood on the ridge 
that guarded the valley from the south-east, he © 
said: “I should like to stroke it’—and he 
waved his hand towards the pattern of rounded — 
hills embossed with rounded beech-woods. She 
felt a cold shiver at his words, and turned 
away her eyes from the landscape that she loved 
so jealously. ‘Titus could never have spoken 
so if he had not loved it too. Love it as he 
might, with all the deep Willowes love for 
country sights and smells, love he never so in- 
timately and soberly, his love must be a horror — 
to her. It was different in kind from hers. 
It was comfortable, it was portable, it was a 
reasonable appreciative appetite, a possessive and 
masculine love. It almost estranged her from — 
Great Mop that he should be able to love it so 
well, and express his love so easily. He loved 
the countryside as though it were a body. 

She had not loved it so. For days at a time 
she had been unconscious of its outward aspect, 
for long before she saw it she had loved it and 
blessed it. With no earnest but a name, a few 
lines and letters on a map, and a spray of 
beech-leaves, she had trusted the place and 

162 


LOLDLY WEeLLoOow'EsS 


staked everything on her trust. She had strug- 
gled to come, but there had been no such 
struggle for Titus. It was as easy for him to 
quit Bloomsbury for the Chilterns as for a cat 
to jump from a hard chair toa soft. Now af- 
ter a little scrabbling and exploration he was 
curled up in the green lap and purring over the 
landscape. ‘The green lap was comfortable. 
He meant to stay in it, for he knew where he 
was well off. It was so comfortable that he 
could afford to wax loving, praise its kindly 
slopes, stretch out a discriminating paw and pat 
it. But Great Mop was no more to him than 
any- other likeable country lap. He liked it 
because he was in possession. His comfort 
apart, it was a place like any other place. 

Laura hated him for daring to love it so. 
She hated him for daring to love it at all. 
Most of all she hated him for imposing his kind 
of love on her. Since he had come to Great 
Mop she had not been allowed to love in her 
own way. Commenting, pointing out, appre- 
ciating, [Titus tweaked her senses one after an- 
other as if they were so many bell-ropes. He 
was a good judge of country things; little 
escaped him, he understood the points of a land- 
scape as James his father had understood the 


163 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


points of a horse. “This was not her way. 
She was ashamed at paying the countryside these 
horse-coping compliments. Day by day the 
spirit of the place withdrew itself further 
from her. ‘The woods judged her by her com- 
pany, and hushed their talk as she passed by with 
Titus. Silence heard them coming, and fled 
out of the fields, the hills locked up their 
thoughts, and became so many grassy mounds 
to be walked up and walked down. She was 
being boycotted, and she knew it. Presently 
she would not know it any more. For her too 
Great Mop would be a place like any other 
place, a pastoral landscape where an aunt 
walked out with her nephew. 

Nothing was left her but this sour field. 
Even this was not truly hers, for here also 
‘Titus walked beside her and called her Aunt 
Lolly. She was powerless against him. He 
had no idea how he had havocked her peace of 
mind, he was making her miserable in the best 
of faith. If he could guess, or if she could 
tell him, what ruin he carried with him, he 
would have gone away. She admitted that, 
even in her frenzy of annoyance. ‘Titus had | 
a kind heart, he meant her nothing but good. 
Besides, he could easily find another village, 

164 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


other laps were as smooth and as green. But 
that would never happen. He would never 
guess. It would never occur to him to look for 
resentment in her face, or to speculate upon 
the mood of any one he knew so well. And 
she would never be able to tell him. When she 
was with him she came to heel and resumed 
her old employment of being Aunt Lolly. 
‘There was no way out. 

_ In vain she had tried to escape, transient and 
delusive had been her ecstasies of relief. She 
had thrown away twenty years of her life like 
a handful of old rags, but the wind had blown 
them back again, and dressed her in the old 
uniform. ‘The wind blew steadily from the 
old quarter; it was the same east wind that 
chivied bits of waste paper down Apsley Ter- 
race. And she was the same old Aunt Lolly, 
so useful and obliging and negligible. 

The field was full of complacent witnesses. 
Titus had let them in. Henry and Caroline 
and Sibyl, Fancy and Marion and Mr. Wolf- 
Saunders stood round about her; they recog- 
nised her and cried out: “Why, Aunt Lolly, 
what are you doing here”? And Dunlop came 
stealthily up behind her and said: “Excuse 
me, Miss Lolly, I thought you might like to 

165 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


know that the warning gong has gone!” She 
stood at bay, trembling before them, shaken 
and sick with the grinding anger of the slave. 
They were come out to recapture her, they had 
tracked her down and closed her in. ‘They 
had let her run a little way—that was all—for 
they knew they could get her back when they 
chose. ‘They had stood grinning behind the 
bushes when she wept in the cowslip field. 

It had been quite entertaining to watch her, 
for she had taken herself and her freedom so 
seriously, happy and intent as a child keeping 
house under the table. They had watched 
awhile in their condescending grown-up way, 
and now they approached her to end the game. 
Henry was ready to overlook her rebellion, his 
lips glistened with magnanimity; Caroline and 
Sibyl came smiling up to twine their arms round 
her waist; the innocent children of Fancy and 
Marion stretched out their hands to her and 
called her Aunt Lolly. And Titus, who had 
let them in, stood a little apart like a showman, 
and said, “You see, it’s all right. She’s just 
the same.” 

They were all leagued against her. They 
were come out to seize on her soul. They 
were invulnerably sure of their prey. 


166 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


“No!” she cried out, wildly clapping her 
hands together. “No! You shan’t get me. 
I won’t go back. I won’t.... Oh! Is 
there xo help?” 

The sound of her voice frightened her. She 
heard its desperate echo rouse the impassive 
wood. She raised her eyes and looked round 
her. ‘The field was empty. She trembled, 
and felt cold. The sultry afternoon was over. 
Dusk and a clammy chill seemed to creep out 
from among the darkening trees that waited 
there so stilly. It was as though autumn had 
come in the place of twilight, and the colour- 
less dark hue of the field dazzled before her 
eyes. She stood in the middle of the field, 
waiting for an answer to her cry. “There was 
no answer. And yet the silence that had fol- 
lowed it had been so intent, so deliberate, that 
it was like a pledge. If any listening power 
inhabited this place; if any grimly favourable 
power had been evoked by her cry; then surely 
a compact had been made, and the pledge irre- 
vocably given. 

She walked slowly towards the wood. She 
was incredibly fatigued; she could scarcely drag 
one foot after the other. Her mind was al- 
most a blank. She had forgotten Titus; she 

167 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


had forgotten the long afternoon of frenzy 
and bewilderment. Everything was unreal ex- 
cept the silence that followed after her outcry. 
As she came to the edge of the wood she heard 
the mutter of heavy foliage. “No!” the 
woods seemed to say, “No! We will not let 
you go.” 

She walked home unheedingly, almost as 
though she were walking in her sleep. ‘The 
chance contact with a briar or a tall weed sent 
drowsy tinglings through her flesh. It was 
with surprise that she looked down from a hill- 
side and saw the crouched roofs of the village 
before her. . 

The cottage was dark; Laura remembered 
that Mrs. Leak had said that she was going out. 
to a lecture at the Congregational Hall that 
evening. As she unlocked the door she smiled 
at the thought of having the house all to her- 
self. “The passage was cool and smelt of 
linoleum. She heard the kitchen clock ticking 
pompously as if it, too, were pleased to have 
the house to itself. When Mrs. Leak went 
out and left the house empty, she was careful 
to lock the door of Laura’s parlour and to put 
the key under the case with the stuffed owl. 
Laura slid her fingers into the dark slit bet- 

168 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


tween the bottom of the case and the bracket. 
The key was cold and sleek; she liked the feel 
of it, and the obliging way it turned in the 
lock. 

As she entered the room, she sniffed. It 
smelt a little fusty from being shut up on a 
warm evening. Her nose distinguished ‘Titus’s 
tobacco and the hemp agrimony that she had 
picked the day before. But there was some- 
thing else—a faintly animal smell which she 
could not account for. She threw up the rat- 
tling window and turned to light the lamp. 
Under the green shade the glow whitened and 
steadied itself. It illuminated the supper-table 
prepared for her, the shining plates, the cucum- 
ber and the radishes, and neat slices of cold 
veal and the glistening surface of the junket. 
Nameless and patient, these things had been 
Waiting in the dark, waiting for her to come 
back and enjoy them. ‘They met her eye with 
self-possession. [hey had been sure that she 
would be pleased to see them. Her spirits shot 
up, as the flame of the lamp had cleared and 
steadied itself a moment before. She forgot 
all possibility of distress. She thought only of 
the moment, and of the certainty with which. 
she possessed it. In this mood of sleepy exalta- 


169 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


tion she stood and looked at the supper-table. 
Long before she had come to Great Mop, the 
shining plates had come. Four of them, she 
knew from Mrs. Leak, had been broken; one 
was too much scorched in the oven to be pre- 
sentable before her. But these had survived 
that she might come and eat off them. ‘The 
quiet cow that had yielded so quietly the milk 
for her junket had wandered in the fields of 
Great Mop long before she saw them, or saw 
them in fancy. ‘The radishes and cucumbers 
sprang from old and well-established Great 
Mop families. Her coming had been foreseen, 
her way had been prepared. Great Mop was 
infallibly part of her life, and she part of the 
life of Great Mop. She took up a plate and 
looked at the maker’s mark. It had come from 
Stoke-on-Trent, where she had never been. 
Now it was here, waiting for her to eat off it. 
“The Kings of Tarshish shall bring gifts,” she 
murmured. 

As she spoke, she felt something move by her. 
foot. She glanced down and saw a small kit- 
ten. It crouched by her foot, biting her shoe- 
lace, and lashing its tail from side to side. 
Laura did not like cats; but this creature, so 
small, so intent, and so ferocious, amused her 

170 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


into kindly feelings. “How did you come 
here? Did you come in through the keyhole?” 
she asked, and bent down to stroke it. Scarcely 
had she touched its hard little head when it 
writhed itself round her hand, noiselessly claw- 
ing and biting, and kicking with its hind legs. 
She felt frightened by an attack so fierce and 
irrational, and her fears increased as she tried 
to shake off the tiny weight. At last she freed 
her hand, and looked at it. It was covered 
with fast-reddening scratches, and as she looked 
she saw a bright round drop of blood ooze out 
from one of them. Her heart gave a violent 
leap, and seemed to drop dead in her bosom. 
She gripped the back of a chair to steady her- 
self and stared at the kitten. Abruptly paci- 
fied, it had curled itself into a ball and fallen 
asleep. Its lean ribs heaved with a rhythmic 
tide of sleep. As she stared she saw its pink 
tongue flicker for one moment over its lips. It 
slept like a suckling. 

Not for a moment did she doubt. But so 
deadly, so complete was the certainty that it 
seemed to paralyse her powers of understanding, 
like a snake-bite in the brain. She continued 
to stare at the kitten, scarcely knowing what it 
was that she knew. Her heart had begun to 


171 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


beat once more, slowly, slowly; her ears were 
dizzied with a shrill wall of sound, and her flesh 
hung on her clammy and unreal. The animal 
smell] that she had noticed when first she entered 
the room now seemed overwhelming rank. 
It smelt as if walls and floor and ceiling had 
been smeared with the juice of bruised fen- 
nel. 

She, Laura Willowes, in England, in the year 
1922, had entered into a compact with the 
Devil. The compact was made, and affirmed, 
and sealed with the round red seal of her blood. 
She remembered the woods, she remembered her 
wild cry for help, and the silence that had fol- 
lowed it, as though in ratification. She heard 
again the mutter of heavy foliage, foliage dark 
and heavy as the wings of night birds. “No! 
No!”—she heard the brooding voice—“We 
will not let you go.” At ease, released from her 
cares, she had walked homeward. Hedge and 
coppice and solitary tree, and the broad dust- 
coloured faces of meadow-sweet and hemlock 
had watched her go by, knowing. ‘The dusk 
had closed her in, brooding! over her. Every 
shadow, every deepened grove had observed her 
from under their brows of obscurity. All knew, 
all could bear witness. Couched within the 

172 


~ LOLLY WILLOWES 


wood, sleeping through the long sultry after- 
noon, had lain the Prince of Darkness; sleep- 
ing, or meditating some brooding thunderstorm 
of his own. Her voice of desperate need had 
aroused him, his silence had answered her with 
a pledge. And now, as a sign of the bond 
between them, he had sent his emissary. It 
had arrived before her, a rank breath, a harsh 
black body in her locked room. ‘The kitten 
was her familiar spirit, that already had greeted 
its mistress, and sucked her blood. 

She shut her eyes and stood very still, hollow- 
ing her mind to admit this inconceivable 
thought. Suddenly she started. ‘There was a 
voice in the room. 

It was the kitten’s voice. It stood beside 
her, mewing plaintively. She turned, and con- 
sidered it—her familiar. It was the smallest 
and thinnest kitten that she had ever seen. It 
was so young that it could barely stand steadily 
upon its legs. She caught herself thinking that 
it was too young to be taken from its mother. 
But the thought was ridiculous. Probably it 
had no mother, for it was the Devil’s kitten, 
and sucked, not milk, but blood. But for all 
that, it looked very like any other young starve- 
ling of its breed. Its face was peaked and its 


173 


LOLLY WILLOWES 

ribs stood out under the dishevelled fluff of its 
sides. Its mew was disproportionately piercing 
and expressive. Strange that anything so small 
and weak should be the Devil’s Officer, pleni- 
potentiary of such a power. Strange that she 
should stand trembling and amazed before a lit- 
tle rag-and-bone kitten with absurdly large ears. 

Its anxious voice besought her, its pale eyes 
were fixed upon her face. She could not but 
feel sorry for anything that seemed so defence- 
less and castaway. Poor little creature, no 
doubt it missed the Devil, its warm nest in his 
shaggy flanks, its play with imp companions. 
Now it had been sent out on its master’s busi- 
ness, sent out too young into the world, like a 
slavey from an Institution. It had no one to 
look to now but her, and it implored her help, as 
she but a little while ago had implored its 
Master’s. Her pity overcame her terror. It 
was no longer her familiar, but a foundling. 
And it was hungry. Must it have more blood, 
or would milk do? Milk was more suitable for 
its tender age. She walked to the table, poured 
out a saucer full of milk and set it down on the 
floor. ‘The kitten drank as though it were starv- 
ing. Crouched by the saucer with dabbled 
nose, it shut its pale eyes and laid back its ears 


174 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


to lap, while shoots of ecstasy ran down its 
protuberant spine and stirred the tip of its tail. 
As Laura watched it the last of her repugnance 
was overcome. ‘Though she did not like cats 
she thought that she would like this one. After 
all, it was pleasant to have some small thing to 
look after. Many lonely women found great 
companionship with even quite ordinary cats. 
This creature could never grow up a beauty, but 
no doubt it would be intelligent. When it had 
cleaned the saucer with large final sweeps of its 
tongue, the kitten looked up at her. “Poor 
lamb!” she said, and poured out the rest of the 
milk. It drank less famishingly now. Its tail 
lay still, its body relaxed, settling down on to 
the floor, overcome by the peaceful weight 
within. At last, having finished its meal, it got 
up and walked round the room, stretching either 
hind leg in turn as it walked. ‘Then, without 
a glance at Laura, it lay down, coiled and un- 
coiled, scratched itself nonchalantly and fell 
asleep. She watched it awhile and then picked 
it up, all limp and unresisting, and settled it in 
her lap. It scarcely opened its eyes, but burrow- 
ing once or twice with its head against her 
knees resumed its slumber. 

Nursing the kitten in her lap Laura sat 


Ne ys 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


thinking. Her thoughts were of a different 
colour now. ‘This trustful contentment, this 
warmth between her knees, lulled her by ex- 
ample. She had never wavered for an instant 
from her conviction that she had made a com- 
pact with the Devil; now she was growing ac- 
customed to the thought. She perceived that 
throughout the greater part of her life she had 
been growing accustomed to it; but insensibly, as 
people throughout the greater part of their lives 
grow accustomed to the thought of their death. 
When it comes, it is a surprise to them. But 
the surprise does not last long, perhaps but for a 
minute or two. Her surprise also was wearing 
off. Quite soon, and she would be able to fold 
her hands upon it, as the hands of the dead are 
folded upon their surprised hearts. But her 
heart still beat, beat at its everyday rate, a small 
regular pulse impelling her momently forward 
into the new witch life that lay before her. 
Since her flesh had already accepted the new 
order of things, and was proceeding so methodi- 
cally towards the future, it behoved her, so she 
thought, to try to readjust her spirit. 

She raised her eyes, and looked at her room, 
the green-painted walls with the chairs sitting 
silently round. She felt herself inhabiting the 

176 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


empty house. “Through the unrevealing square 
of the window her mind looked at the view. 
About the empty house was the village, and 
about the village the hills, neighbourly under 
their covering of night. Room, house, village, 
hills encircled her like the rings of a fortifica- 
tion. ‘This was her domain, and it was to keep 
this inviolate that she had made her compact 
with the Devil. She did not know what the 
price might be, but she was sure of the purchase. 
She need not fear Titus now, nor any of the 
Willoweses. ‘They could not drive her out, or 
enslave her spirit any more, nor shake her 
possession of the place she had chosen. While 
she lived her solitudes were hers inalienably; 
she and the kitten, the witch and the familiar, 
’ would live on at Great Mop, growing old to- 
gether, and hearing the owls hoot from the 
winter trees. And after? Mirk! But what 
else had there ever been? ‘Those green grassy 
hills in the churchyard were too high to be seen 
over.’ What man can stand on their summit 
and look beyond? 

She felt neither fear nor disgust. A witch of 
but a few hours’ standing she rejected with the 
scorn of the initiate all the bugaboo surmises of 
the public. She looked with serene curiosity 


t77 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


at the future, and saw it but little altered from 
what she had hoped and planned, -If she had 
been called upon to decide in cold blood between 
being an aunt and being a witch, she might 
have been overawed by habit and the cowardice 
of compunction. But in the moment of elec- 
tion, under the stress and turmoil of the hunted 
Lolly as under a covering of darkness, the true 
Laura had settled it all unerringly. She had 
known where to turn. She had been like the 
girl in the fairy tale whose godmother gave her 
~ a little nutshell box and told her to open it in 
the hour of utter distress. Unsurmised by 
others, and half forgotten by the girl, the little 
nutshell box abided its time; and in the hour 
of utter distress it opened of itself. So, un- 
realised, had Laura been carrying her talisman 
in her pocket. She was a witch by vocation. 
Even in the old days of Lady Place the impulse 
had stirred in her. What else had set her upon 
her long solitary walks, her quests for powerful 
and forgotten herbs, her brews and distillations? 
In London she had never had the heart to take 
out her still. More urgent for being denied this 
innocent service, the ruling power of her life 
had assaulted her with dreams and intimations, 
calling her imagination out from the warm safe 


178 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


room to wander in darkened fields and by deso- 
late sea-boards, through marshes and fens, and 
along the outskirts of brooding woods. It had 
haled her to Wapping and to the Jews’ Burying 
Ground, and then, ironically releasing her, had 
left her to mourn and find her way back to 
Apsley Terrace. How she had come to Great 
Mop she could not say; whether it was of her 
own will, or whether, exchanging threatenings 
and mockeries for sweet persuasions, Satan had 
at last taken pity upon her bewilderment, lead- 
ing her by the hand into the flower-shop in the 
~ Moscow Road; but from the moment of her 
arrival there he had never been far off. Sure 
of her—she supposed—he had done little for 
nine months but watch her. Near at hand but 
out of sight the loving huntsman couched in 
the woods, following her with his eyes. But 
all the time, whether couched in the woods or 
hunting among the hills, he drew closer. He 
was hidden in the well when she threw in the 
map and the guide-book. He sat in the oven, 
teaching her what power she might have over 
the shapes of men. He followed her and Mr. 
Saunter up and down between the henhouses. 
He was nearest of all upon the night when she 
climbed Cubbey Ridge, so near then that she 


179 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


acknowledged his presence and was afraid. 
That night, indeed, he must have been within a 
hand’s-breadth of her. But her fear had kept 
him at bay, or else he had not chosen to take her 
just then, preferring to watch until he could 
overcome her mistrust and lure her into his 
hand. For Satan is not only a huntsman. His 
interest in mankind is that of a skilful and ex- 
perienced naturalist. Even human sportsmen 
at the end of their span sometimes declare that 
to potter about in the woods is more amusing 
than to sit behind a butt and shoot driven grouse. 
And Satan, who has hunted from eternity, a 
little jaded moreover by the success of his latest 
organised Flanders battue, might well feel that 
his interest in a Solitary Snipe like Laura was 
but sooner or later to measure the length of her 
nose. Yet hunt he must; it is his destiny, and 
whether he hunts with a gun or a butterfly net, 
sooner or later the chase must end. All finali- 
ties, whether good or evil, bestow a feeling of 
relief; and now, understanding how long the 
chase had lasted, Laura felt a kind of satisfac- 
tion at having been popped into the bag. 

She was distracted from these interesting 
thoughts by the sounds of footsteps. The kit- 

180 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


ten heard them too, and sat up, yawning. 
The Leaks coming back from their lecture, 
thought Laura. But it was Titus. Inserting 
his head and shoulders through the window 
he asked if he could come in and borrow som: 
milk. , 

“I haven’t any milk,” said Laura, “but come 
in all the same.” 

She began to tickle the kitten behind the ears 
in order to reassure it. By lamplight ‘Titus’s 
head seemed even nearer to the ceiling, it was a 
relief to her sense of proportion when he sat 
down. His milk, he explained, the jugful 
which Mrs. Garland left on the sitting-room 
table for his nightly Ovaltine, had curdled into 
a sort of unholy junket. ‘This he attributed to 
popular education, and the spread of science 
among dairy-farmers; in other words, Mr. Dod- 
bury had overdone the preservative. 

“I don’t think it’s science,’ said Laura. 
“More likely to be the weather. It was very 
sultry this afternoon.” 

“T saw you starting out. I had half a mind 
to come with you, but it was too hot to be a 
loving nephew. Where did you go?” 

“Up to the windmill.” 

181 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


“Did you find the wind?” 

fe Nie. 7? | 

“You weren’t going in the direction of the 
windmill when I saw you.” 

“No. I changed my mind. About the 
milk,” she continued (Titus had come for milk. 
Perhaps, being reminded that he had come in 
vain, he would go. She was growing sleepy): 
“Y’m sorry, but I have none left. I gave it 
all to the kitten.” 

“T’ve been remarking the kitten. He’s new, 
isn’t he? You ugly little devil!” 

The kitten lay on her knees quite quietly. 
It regarded Titus with its pale eyes, and blinked 
indifferently. It was only waiting for him to 
go, Laura thought, to fall asleep again. 

“Where has it come from? A present from 
the water-butt?” 

“T don’t know. I found it here when I 
came back for supper.” 

“Tt’s a plain-headed young Grimalkin. Still, 
I should keep it if I were you. It will bring 
you luck.” 

“T don’t think one has much option about 
keeping a cat,” said Laura. “If it wants to 
stay with me it shall.” 

“It looks settled enough. Do keep it, Aunt 

182 


LOLLY WILLOWES 
Lolly. A woman looks her best with a cat on 
her knees.” 

Laura bowed. 

“What will you call it?” 

Into Laura’s memory came a picture she had 
seen long ago in one of the books at Lady Place. 
The book was about the persecution of the 
witches, and the picture was a woodcut of 
Matthew Hopkins the witch-finder. Wearing 
a large hat he stood among a coven of witches, 
bound cross-legged upon their stools. ‘Their 
confessions came out of their mouths upon 
scrolls. “My imp’s name is Ilemauzar,” said 
one; and another imp at the bottom of the 
page, an alert, ill-favoured cat, so lean and 
muscular that it looked like a skinned hare, was 
called Vinegar Tom. 

“T shall call it Vinegar,” she answered. 

“Vinegar!” said Titus. “How do you like 
your name?” 

The kitten pricked up its ears. It sprang 
from Laura’s knee and began to fence with 
Titus’s shadow, feinting and leaping back. 
Laura watched it a little apprehensively, but it 
did him no harm. It had awakened in a play- 
ful frame of mind after its long sleep, that was 
all. When ‘Titus had departed it followed 

183 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


Laura to her bedroom, and as she undressed it 
danced round her, patting at her clothes as they 
fell. 

In the morning the kitten roused her by 
mewing to be let out. She awoke from a pro- 
found and dreamless sleep. It took her a little 
time to realise that she had a kitten in her bed- 
room, a kitten of no ordinary kind. However 
it was behaving quite like an ordinary kitten 
now, so she get out of bed and let it out by the 
back door. It was early; no one was stirring. 
The kitten disappeared with dignity among the 
cabbages, and Laura turned her thoughts back- 
ward to the emotions of overnight. She tried 
to recall them, but could not; she could only 
recall the fact that overnight she had felt them. 
The panic that then had shaken her flesh was 
no more actual than a last winter’s gale. It 
had been violent enough while it lasted, an 
invisible buffeting, a rending of life from its 
context. But now her memory presented it to 
her as a cold slab of experience, like a slab of 
pudding that had lain all night solidifying in 
the larder. ‘This was no matter. Her terror 
had been an incident; it had no bearing upon 
her future, could she now recall it to life it 
would have no message for her. But she re- 


184 


LOLLY WILLOWES 

gretted her inability to recapture the mood that 
had followed upon it, when she sat still and 
thought so wisely about Satan. ‘Those medita- 
tions had seemed to her of profound import. 
She had sat at her Master’s feet, as it were, ad- 
mitted to intimacy, and gaining the most valu- 
able insight into his character. But that was 
gone too. Her thoughts, recalled, seemed to be 
of the most commonplace nature, and she felt 
that she knew very little about the Devil. 

Meanwhile there was the kitten, an earnest 
that she should know more. 

“Vinegar!” she called, and heard its answer, 
a drumming scramble among the cabbage leaves. 
She wished that Vinegar would impart some of 
his mind to her instead of being so persistently 
and genially kittenish. But he was a familiar, 
no doubt of it. And she was a witch, the 
inheritrix of aged magic, spells rubbed smooth 
with long handling, and the mistress of strange 
powers that got into Titus’s milk-jug. For no 
doubt that was the beginning, and a very good 
beginning, too. Well begun is half-done; she 
could see Titus bending over his suit-case. “The 
Willowes tradition was very intolerant of pease 
under its mattress. 

Though she tried to think clearly about the 

185 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


situation—grapple, she remembered, had been 
Caroline’s unpleasantly strenuous word—her 
attention kept sidling off to other things: the 
sudden oblique movements of the water-drops 
that glistened on the cabbage leaves, or the 
affinity between the dishevelled brown hearts of 
the sunflowers and Mrs. Leak’s scrubbing-brush, 
propped up on the kitchen window-sill. It must 
have rained heavily during the night. ‘The 
earth was moist and swelled, and the air so 
fresh that it made her yawn. Her limbs were 
heavy, and the contentment of the newly- 
awakened was upon her. All night she had 
bathed in nothingness, and now she was too 
recently emerged from that absolving tide to 
take much interest in what lay upon its banks. 
Her eyelids began to droop, and calling the 
kitten she went back to bed again and soon 
fell asleep. , 

She was asleep when Mrs. Leak brought her 
morning tea. 

Mrs. Leak said: “Did the thunder keep you 
awake, miss?” 

Laura shook her head. “TI never even heard 
ie 

Mrs. Leak looked much astonished. “It’s 
well to have a good conscience,” she remarked. 


186 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


Laura stretched herself, sat up in bed, and 
began to tell Mrs. Leak about the kitten. This 
seemed to be her real awakening. ‘The other 
was a dream. 

Mrs. Leak was quite prepared to welcome 
the kitten; that was, provided her old Jim made 
no unpleasantness. Jim was not Mr. Leak, but 
a mottled marmalade cat, very old and rather 
shabby. Laura could not imagine him making 
any unpleasantness, but Mrs. Leak estimated 
his character rather differently. Jim thought 
himself quite a Great I Am, she said. 

After breakfast Laura and Vinegar were 
called into the kitchen for the ceremony of 
introduction. Jim was doing a little washing. 
His hind leg was stuck straight up, out of the 
way, while he attended to the pit of his stomach. 
Nothing could have been more suitable than 
Vinegar’s modest and deferential approach. 
Jim gave him one look and went on licking. 
Mrs. Leak said that all would be well between 
them; Jim always kept himself to himself, but 
she could see that the old cat had taken quite a 
fancy to Miss Willowes’s kitten. She promised 
Vinegar some of Jim’s rabbit for dinner. Mrs. 
Leak did not hold the ordinary view of country 
people that cats must fend for themselves. 


187 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


“They're as thoughtful as we,” she said. 
“Why should they eat mouse unless they want 
to?” She was continually knocking at the 
parlour door with tit-bits for Vinegar, but she 
was scrupulous that Laura should bestow them 
with her own hand. 
Since Titus had come to Great Mop Laura 
had seen little of Mrs. Leak. Mrs. Leak knew 
what good manners were; she had not been 
a housemaid at Lazzard Court for nothing. 
‘Taken separately, either Titus or his aunt might 
be human beings, but in conjunction they became 
gentry. Mrs. Leak remembered her position 
and withdrew to it, firmly. Laura saw this 
and was sorry. She made several attempts to 
persuade Mrs.,Leak out from behind her white 
apron, but nothing came of them, and she knew 
that while Titus was in the village nothing 
would. Not that Mrs. Leak did not lke Titus; 
she approved of him highly; and it was exactly 
her approval that made her barricade of respect 
so insuperable. But where Laura had failed, 
the kitten succeeded. From the moment that 
Jim sanctioned her kindly opinion of him, Mrs. 
Leak began to thaw. Laura knew better than 
to make a fuss over this turn in the situation; 


188 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


she took a leaf out of the Devil’s book and 
lay low, waiting for a decisive advance; and 
presently it came. Mrs. Leak asked if Miss 
Willowes would care to come out for a stroll 
one evening; it was pleasant to get a breath of 
air before bedtime. Miss Willowes would like 
nothing better; that very evening would suit 
her if Mrs. Leak had nothing else todo. Mrs. 
Leak said that she would get the washing-up 
done as soon as possible, and after that she would 
be at Miss Willowes’s disposal. However, it 
was nearly half-past ten before Mrs. Leak 
knocked on the parlour door. Laura had ceased 
to expect her, supposing that Mr. Leak or some 
household accident had claimed her, but she was 
quite as ready to go out for a walk as to go to 
bed, and Mrs. Leak made no reference to the 
lateness of the hour. Indeed, according to the 
Great Mop standard, the hour was not particu- 
larly late. Although the night was dark, Laura 
noticed that quite a number of the inhabitants 
were standing about in the street. 

They walked down the road in silence as far . 
as the milestone, and turned into the track that 
went up the hillside and past the wood. Others 
had turned that way also. ‘The gate stood open, 

189 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


and voices sounded ahead. It was then that 
Laura guessed the truth, and turned to her 
companion. 

“‘Where are you taking me?” she said. Mrs. 
Leak made no answer, but in the darkness she 
took hold of Laura’s hand. ‘There was no need 
for further explanation. ‘They were going to 
the Witches’ Sabbath. Mrs, Leak was a witch 
too; a matronly witch like Agnes Sampson, 
she would be Laura’s chaperone. ‘The night 
was full of voices. Padding rustic footsteps 
went by them in the dark When they had 
reached the brow of the hill a faint continuous 
sound, resembling music, was borne towards 
them by the light wind. Laura remembered 
how young Billy Thomas, suffering from tooth- 
ache, had played all night upon his mouth- 
organ. She laughed. Mrs. Leak squeezed her 
hand. 

‘The meeting-place was some way off; by the 
time they reached it Laura’s eyes had grown 
accustomed to the darkness. She could see a” 
crowd of people walking about in a large field; 
lights of some sort were burning under a hedge, 
and one or two paper garlands were looped over 
the trees. When she first caught sight of them, 
the assembled witches and warlocks seemed to 

190 


LOLLY WILLOWES 
be dancing, but now the music had stopped and 
they were just walking about. There was 
something about their air of disconnected jollity 
which reminded Laura of a Primrose League 
gala and féte. A couple of bullocks watched 
the Sabbath from an adjoining field. 

Laura was denied the social gift, she had 
never been good at enjoying parties. But this, 
she hoped, would be a different and more ex- 
hilarating affair. She entered the field in a 
most propitious frame of mind, which not even 
Mr. Gurdon, wearing a large rosette like a 
steward’s and staring rudely and searchingly at 
each comer before he allowed them to pass 
through the gate, was able to check. 

“Old Goat!” exclaimed Mrs. Leak in a voice 
of contemptuous amusement after they had 
passed out of Mr. Gurdon’s hearing. ‘He 
thinks he can boss us here, just as he does in the 
village.” 

“Is Mr. Jones here?” inquired Laura. 

Mrs. Leak shook her head and laughed. 

“Mr. Gurdon doesn’t allow him to come.” 

“TI suppose he doesn’t think it suitable for a 
clergyman.” 

Perhaps it was as well that Mr. Gurdon had 
such strict views. In spite of the example of 


IQI 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


Mr. Lowis, that old reading parson, it might 
be a little awkward if Mr. Jones were allowed 
to attend the Sabbath. 

But that apparently was not the reason. Mrs. 
Leak was beginning to explain when she broke 
off abruptly, coughed in a respectful way, and 
dropped a deep curtsey. Before them stood an 
old lady, carrying herself like a queen, and 
wearing a mackintosh that would have disgraced 
a tinker’s drab. She acknowledged Mrs. Leak’s 
curtsey with an inclination of the head, and 
turned to Laura. 

“Tam Miss Larpent. And you, I think, must 
be Miss Willowes.” | 

The voice that spoke was clear as a small 
bell and colourless as if time had bleached it of 
every human feeling save pride. ‘The hand that 
rested in Laura’s was light as a bird’s claw; 
a fine glove encased it like a membrane, and 
through the glove Laura felt the slender bones 
and the sharp-faceted rings. 

“Long ago,” continued Miss Larpent, “I had 
the pleasure of meeting your great-uncle, 
Commodore Willowes.” 

Good heavens, thought Laura in a momentary 
confusion, was great-uncle Demetrius a war- 
lock? For Miss Larpent was so perfectly 

192 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


witchlike that it seemed scarcely possible that 
she should condescend to ordinary gentle- 
men. 

Apparently Miss Larpent could read Laura’s 
thoughts. 

“At Cowes,” she added, reassuringly. 

Laura raised her eyes to answer, but Miss 
Larpent had disappeared. Where she had stood, 
stood Miss Carloe, mincing and bridling, as 
though she would usurp the other’s gentility. 
Over her face she wore a spotted veil. Rec- 
ognising Laura she put on an air of delighted 
surprise and squeaked like a bat, and immediately 
she too edged away and was lost in the dark- 
ness. i 
Then a young man whom she did not know 
came up to Laura and put his arm respectfully 
round her waist. She found herself expected to 
dance. She could not hear any music, but she 
danced as best she could, keeping time to the 
rhythm of his breath upon her cheek. ‘Their 
dance was short, she supposed she had not 
acquitted herself to her partner’s satisfaction, 
for after a few turns he released her, and left 
her standing by the hedge. Not a word had 
passed between them. Laura felt that she ought 
to say something, but she could not think of 


193 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


a suitable opening. It was scarcely possible to 
praise the floor. | 

A familiar discouragement began to settle 
upon her spirits. In spite of her hopes she was 
not going to enjoy herself. Even as a witch, 
it seemed, she was doomed to social failure, and 
her first Sabbath was not going to open livelier 
vistas than were opened by her first ball. She 
remembered her dancing days in Somerset, 
Hunt Balls, and County Balls in the draughty 
Assembly Rooms. With the best intentions she 
had never managed to enjoy them. The first 
hour was well enough, but after that came in- 
creasing listlessness and boredom; the effort, 
when one danced again with the same partner, 
not to say the same things, combined with the 
obligation to say something rather like them, 
the control of eyelids, the conversion of yawns 
into smiles, the humbling consciousness that there 
was nothing to look forward to except the drive 
home. ‘That was pleasant, and so was the fillip 
of supper at the drive’s end, and the relief of 
yielding at last to an unfeigned hunger and 
sleepiness. But these were by-blow joys; of 
the delights for which balls are ordained she 
knew nothing. | 

She watched the dancers go by and wondered 


194 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


what the enchantment was which they felt and 
she could not. What made them come out in 
the middle of the night, loop paper garlands 
over the trees, light a row of candles in the 
ditch, and then, friends and enemies and indif- 
ferents, go bumping round on the rough grass? 
That fatal comparison with the Primrose League 
recurred to her. She was not entertained, so 
she blamed the entertainment. But the fault 
lay with her, she had never been good at parties, 
she had not got the proper Sabbath-keeping 
spirit. Miss Larpent was enjoying herself; 
Laura saw the bonnet whisk past. But doubt- 
less Miss Larpent had enjoyed herself at Cowes. 

‘These depressing thoughts were interrupted 
by red-haired Emily, who came spinning from 
her partner’s arms, seized hold of Laura and 
carried her back into the dance. Laura liked 
dancing with Emily; the pasty-faced anc 
anaemic young slattern whom she had scen 
dawdling about the village danced with a fer- 
vour that annihilated every misgiving. They 
whirled faster and faster, fused together lke 
two suns that whirl and blaze in a single destruc- 
tion. A strand of the red hair came undone and 
brushed across Laura’s face. “The contact made 
her tingle from head to foot. She shut her eyes 


195 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


and dived into obliviousness—with Emily for a 
partner she could dance until the gunpowder 
ran out of the heels of her boots. Alas! this 
happy ending was not to be, for at the height of 
their performance Emily was snatched away by 
Mr. Jowl, the horse-doctor. Laura opened her 
eyes and saw the pale face disappearing in the 
throng as the moon sinks into the clouds. 

Emily was in great request, and no wonder. 
Like a torch she was handed on from one to 
another, and every mutation shook down some 
more hair. ‘The Sabbath was warming up 
nicely now, every one was jigging it, even 
Laura. For a while Mrs. Leak kept up a 
semblance of chaperonage. Suddenly appear- 
ing at Laura’s elbow she would ask her if she 
Were enjoying herself, and glancing at her 
would slip away before she could answer. Or 
with vague gestures she indicated some evasively 
bowing partner, male or female; and silently 
Laura would give her hand and be drawn into 
the dance, presently to be relinquished or car- 
ried off by some one else. 

‘The etiquette of a Sabbath appeared to con- 
sist of one rule only: to do nothing for long. 
Partners came and went, figures and conforma- 
tions were in a continual flux. Sometimes the 


196 


0 . 
LOLLY WILLOWES 


dancers were coupled, sometimes they jigged in 
a circle round some specially agile performer, 
sometimes they all took hands and galloped about 
the field. Half-way through a very formal 
quadrille presided over by the Misses Larpent 
they fell abruptly to playing Fox and Geese. 
In spite of Mr. Gurdon’s rosette there was no 
Master of Ceremonies. A single mysterious 
impulse seemed to govern the company. ‘They 
wheeled and manceuvred like a flock of starlings. 
After an hour or two of this Laura felt dizzy 
and bewildered. ‘Taking advantage of the gen- 
eral lack of formality she tore herself from 
Mr. Gurdon’s arms, not to dance with another, 
but to slip away and sit quietly in the hedge. 
She wondered where the music came from. 
She had heard it quite clearly as she came over 
the hill, but upon entering the field she had 
lost it. Now as she watched the others she 
heard it once more. When they neared it grew 
louder, when they retreated into the darkness it 
faded with them, as though the sound issued 
from the dancers themselves, and hung, a dron- 
ing exhalation, above their heads. It was an 
odd kind of music, a continuous high shapeless 
blurr of sound. It was something like mosqui- 
toes in a hot bedroom, and something like a 


197 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


distant threshing machine. But besides this, it 
had a faintly human quality, a metallic breath- 
ing as of trombones marking the measure; and 
when the dancers took hands and revolved in a 
leaping circle the music leaped and pounded 
with them, so much like the steam-organ music 
of a merry-go-round that for a moment Laura 
thought that they were riding on horses and 
dragons, bobbing up and down on crested 
dragons with heads like cocks, and horses with 
blood-red nostrils. 

‘The candles burnt on in the dry ditch. 
Though the boughs of the thorn-trees moved 
above them and grated in the night-wind, the 
candle flames flowed steadily upwards. ‘Thus 
lit from below, the dancers seemed of more than 
human stature, their bodies extending into the 
darkness as if in emulation of their gigantic 
upcast shadows. ‘The air was full of the smell 
of bruised grass. 

Mrs. Leak had forgotten Laura now. She 
was dancing the Highland Schottische with a 
lean young man whose sleeves were rolled up 
over his tattooed forearms. ‘The nails in his 
boots shone in the candle-light, and a lock of 
hair hung over his eye. Mrs. Leak danced very 
well. Her feet flickered to and fro as nimbly | 

198 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


as a tongue. At the turn of the figure she 
tripped forward to be caught up and swung 
round on the young man’s arm. ‘Though her 
feet were off the ground they twitched with the 
movements of the dance, and set down again 
they took up the uninterrupted measure. Laura 
watched her with admiration. Even at a 
Witches’ Sabbath Mrs. Leak lost none of her 
respectability. Her white apron was scarcely 
crumpled, she was as self-contained as a cat 
watching a mouse, and her eyes dwelt upon the 
young man’s face as though she were listening 
to a sermon. 

She preserved her dignity better than some of 
the others did. Mr. Gurdon stood by himself, 
stamping his foot and tossing his head, more like 
the farmer’s bull than ever. Miss Carloe was 
begging people to look at the hole in her leg 
where the hedgehog sucked her; and red-haired 
Emily, half-naked and holding a candle in either 
hand, danced round a tree, curtseying to it, her 
mouth fixed in a breathless corpse-like grin. 

Miss Minnie and Miss Jane had also changed 
their demeanour for the worse. ‘They sat a 
little retired from the dancers, tearing up a cold 
grouse and gossiping with Mrs. Dewey the mid- 
wife. A horrible curiosity stretched their skinny 


cy kes 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


old necks. Miss Minnie had forgotten to gnaw 
her grouse, she leant forward, her hand covered 
the lower half of her face to conceal the work- 
ings of her mouth. -Miss Jane listened as 
eagerly, and questioned the midwife. But at 
the answers she turned away with coquettish 
shudders, pretending to stop her ears, or. threat- 
ening to slap her sister with a bone. 

Laura averted her eyes. She wriggled herself 
a little further into the hedge. Once again the 
dancers veered away to the further side of the 
field, their music retreating with them. She 
hoped they would stay away, for their proximity 
was disturbing. ‘They aroused in her neither 
fear nor disgust, but when they came close, and 
she felt their shadows darkening above her head, 
a nameless excitement caught hold of her. As 
they departed, heaviness took its place. She was 
not in the least sleepy and yet several times she 
found herself astray from her thoughts, as 
though she were falling asleep in a train. She 
wondered what time it was and looked up to. 
consult the stars. But a featureless cloud cov- 
ered the sky. 

Laura resigned herself. ‘There was nothing 
to do but to wait, though what she waited for 
she did not know: whether at length Mrs. 

200 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


Leak would come, like a chaperone from the 
supper-room, and say: ‘Well, my dear, I really 
must take you home,—or if, suddenly, at the 
first cock-crow, all the company would rise up 
in the air, a darkening bevy, and disperse, and 
she with them. 

She was roused by a shrill whistle. ‘The 
others heard it too.. Miss Minnie and Miss 
Jane scrambled up and hurried across the field, 
outdistancing Mrs. Dewey, who followed them 
panting for breath and twitching her skirts over 
the rough ground. ‘The music had stopped. 
Laura saw all the witches and warlocks jostling 
each other, and pressing into a circle. She 
wondered what was happening now. Whatever 
it was, it seemed to please and excite them a 
great deal, for she could hear them all laugh- 
ing and talking at once. Some newcomer, she 
supposed—for their behaviour was that of wel- 
come. Now the newcomer must be making a” 
speech, for they all became silent: a successful 
speech, for the silence was broken by acclama- 
tions, and bursts of laughter. 

“Of course!” said Laura. “It must be 
Satan!” 

As she spoke she saw the distant group turn 
and, with one accord begin running towards 

201 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


where she sat. She got up; she felt frightened, 
for their advance was like a stampede of 
animals, and she feared that they would knock 
her down and trample her underfoot. ‘The first 
runner had already swooped upon her, she felt 
herself encompassed, caught hold of, and car- 
ried forward. Voices addressed her, but she 
did not understand what was said. She gathered 
that she was being encouraged and congratu- 
lated, as though the neglectful assembly had 
suddenly decided to make much of the unsuccess- 
ful guest. Presently she found herself between 
Mrs. Leak and red-haired Emily. Each held 
an arm. Mrs. Leak patted her encouragingly, 
and Emily whispered rapidly, incoherently, in 
her ear. ‘They were quite close to the new- 
comer, Satan, if it were he, who was talking to 
Miss Minnie and Miss Jane. Laura looked at 
him. She could see him quite clearly, for those 
who stood round had taken up the candles to 
light him. He was standing with his back to 
her, speaking with great animation to the old 
ladies, bowing, and fidgeting his feet. As he 
spoke he threw out his hands, and his whole lean, 
lithe body seemed to be scarcely withheld from 
breaking into a dance. Laura saw Miss Jane 
202 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


point at her, and the stranger turned sharply 
round. 

She saw his face. For a moment she thought 
that he was a Chinaman; then she saw that he 
was wearing a mask. ‘The candle-light shone 
full upon it, but so fine and slight was the 
modelling that scarcely a shadow marked the 
indentations of cheek and jaw. ‘The narrow 
eyes, the slanting brows, the small smiling mouth 
had a vivid innocent inexpressiveness. It was 
like the face of a very young girl. Alert and 
immobile the mask regarded her. And she, 
entranced, stared back at this imitation face that 
outwitted all perfections of flesh and blood. It 
was lifeless, lifeless! But below it, in the hol- 
low of the girlish throat, she saw a flicker of 
life, a small regular pulse, small and regular 
as though a pearl necklace slid by under the 
skin. Mincing like a girl, the masked young 
man approached her, and as he approached the 
others drew back and left her alone. With 
secretive and undulating movements he came to 
her side. ‘The lifeless face was near her own 
and through the slits in the mask the unseen 
eyes surveyed her. Suddenly she felt upon her 
cheeks a cold darting touch. With a fine 

203 


LOLLY WILTOWES 

tongue like a serpent’s he had licked her right 
cheek, close to the ear. She started back, but 
found his hands detaining her. 

“How are you enjoying your first Sabbath, 
Miss Willowes?” he said. 

“Not at all,” answered Laura, and turned her 
back on him. | 

Without glancing to left or right she walked 
out of the field, and the dancers made way for 
her in silence. She was furious at the affront, 
raging at Satan, at Mrs. Leak, at Miss Larpent, 
with the unreasoning anger of a woman who has 
allowed herself to be put in a false position. 
This was what came of attending Sabbaths, or 
rather, this was what came of submitting her 
good sense to politeness. Hours ago her instinct 
had told her that she was not going to enjoy 
herself. If she had asserted herself and gone 
home then, this odious and petty insult would 
never have happened. But she had stayed on, 
deferring to a public opinion that was not con- 
cerned whether she stayed or went, stayed on 
just as she used to stay on at balls, stayed on to 
be treated like a silly girl who at the end of a 
mechanical flirtation is kissed behind a palm. 

Anyway, she was out of it now. Her feet 
had followed the windings of a little path, 

204 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


which crossed a ditch by a plank bridge: it passed 
through a belt of woodland, and led her out 
on to a space of common that sloped away into 
the darkness. Here she sat down and spread 
out her palms’ upon the cool turf. 

She had been insulted and made a mock of. 
But for all that she did not feel truly humiliated. 
Rather, she was filled with a delighted and 
scornful surprise at the ease with which she had 
avenged her dignity. “The mask floated before 
her eyes, inscrutable as ever, and she thought 
no more of it than of an egg-shell that she 
could crush between her finger and thumb. 
‘The Powers of Darkness, then, were no more 
fearful than a herd of bullocks in a field? 
Once round upon them and the sniffing encum- 
bering horde made off, a scramble of ungainly 
rumps and foolish tails. 

It had been a surprising night. And long, 
endlessly long, and not ended yet. She yawned, 
and felt hungry. She fancied herself at home, 
cutting large crumbling slices from the loaf in 
the cupboard, and spreading them with a great 
deal of butter and the remains of the shrimp 
paste. But she did not know where she was, 
and it was too dark to venture homewards with 
no sense of direction. She grew impatient with 

205 


LOLLY WILLOWES 

the night and strained her ears for the sound 
of cock-crow. As if her imperious will had 
wrenched aside the covering of cloud, a faint 
glimmer delineated part of the horizon. Moon- 
set or sunrise, westerly or easterly she did not 
know; but as she watched it doubtfully, think- 
ing that it must be moonset, for it seemed to 
dwindle rather than increase, a breeze winnowed 
the air, and looking round her she saw on every 
side the first beginnings of light. 

Sitting up, her hunger and sleepiness forgot- 
ten, and all the disappointments and enigmas of 
the Sabbath dismissed from her mind, she 
watched the spectacle of the dawn. Soon she 
was able to recognise her surroundings, she knew 
the place well, it was here that she had met 
the badger. The slope before her was dotted 
with close-fitting juniper bushes, and presently 
she saw a rabbit steal out from one of these, 
twitch its ears, and scamper off. ‘The cloud 
which covered the sky was no longer a solid 
thing. It was rising, and breaking up into 
swirls of vapour that yielded to the wind. ‘The 
growing day washed them with silver. Every 
moment the web of cloud seemed to rise higher 
and higher, as though borne upward by a rising 
tide of light. “The rooks flew up cawing from 

206 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


the wood. Presently she heard the snap of a 
dead twig. Somebody was astir. Whistling to 
himself, a man came out of the wood. He 
walked with a peculiarly slow and easy gait, 
and he had a:stick in his hand, an untrimmed 
rod pulled from the wood. He switched at the 
head of a tall thistle, and Laura saw the dew 
fly off the astonished blossom. Seeing her, he 
stopped short, as though he did not wish to in- 
trude on her. He showed no surprise that she 
should be sitting on the hillside, waiting for the 
sun to rise. She smiled at him, grateful for his 
good manners, and also quite pleased to see a 
reasonable being again; and emboldened by this, 
he smiled also, and approached. 

“You are up very early, Miss Willowes.” 

She did not recognise him, but that was no 
reason why he should not recognise her. She 
thought he must be a gamekeeper, for he wore 
gaiters and a corduroy coat. His face was 
brown and wrinkled, and his teeth were as white 
and even as a dog’s. Laura liked his appear- 
ance. He had a pleasant, rather detached air, 
_ which suited well with the early morning. She 
said: 

“T have been up all night.” 

There was no inquisitiveness in his look; and 

207 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


when he expressed the hope that she felt none 
the worse for it, he spoke without servility or 
covert amusement. 

“T liked it very much,” said Laura. Her 
regard for truth made her add: “Particu- 
larly when it began to be light. I was growing 
rather bored before then.” 

“Some ladies would feel afraid,” said he. 

“T’m not afraid when I’m alone,” she an- 
swered. “I lived in the country when I was 
a girl.” 

He bowed his head assentingly. Something 
in his manner implied that he knew this already. 
Perhaps he had heard about her in the vil- 
lage. 

“It’s pleasant to be in the country again,” 
she continued. “T like Great Mop very much.” 

“T hope you will stay here, Miss Willowes.” 

“I hope so too.” 

She spoke a little sadly. In this unaccustomed 
hour her soul was full of doubts. She wondered 
if, having flouted the Sabbath, she were still a 
witch, or whether, her power being taken from 
her, she would become the prey of a healthy 
and untroubled Titus. And being faint for 
want of food and want of sleep, she foreboded 
the worst. 

208 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


“Yes, you must stay here. It would be a 
pity to go now.” 

Laura nearly said, “I have nowhere to go,” 
but a dread of exile came over her like a salt 
wave, and she could not trust herself to speak 
to this kind man. He came nearer and said: 

“Remember, Miss Willowes, that I shall 
always be very glad to help you. You have 
only to ask me.” 

“But where shall I find you?” she asked, too 
much impressed by the kindness of his words to 
think them strange. 

“You will always find me in the wood,” he 
answered, and touching his cap he walked away. 
She heard the noise of swishing branches and 
the scuff of feet among dead leaves growing 
fainter as he went further into the wood. 

She decided not to go back just yet. A com- 
fortable drowsiness settled down upon her with 
the first warmth of the risen sun. Her mind 
dwelt upon the words just spoken. ‘The promise 
had been given in such sober earnestness that 
she had accepted it without question, seeing 
nothing improbable in the idea that she should 
require the help of a strange gamekeeper, or that 
he should undertake to give it. She thought 
that people might be different in the early 

209 


LOLLY WILLOWES 
morning; less shy, like the rabbits that were 
playing round her, more open-hearted, and 
simpler of speech. In any case, she was grate- 
ful to the stranger for his goodwill. He had 
known that she wanted to stay on at Great Mop, 
he had told her that she must do so. It was 
the established country courtesy, the invitation 
to take root. But he must have meant what he 
said, for seeing her troubled he had offered to 
help. Perhaps he was married; and if Mrs. 
Leak, offended, would keep her no longer, she 
might lodge with him and his wife in their 
cottage, a cottage in a dell among the beech- 
woods. He had said that he lived in the woods. 
She began to picture her life in such a cottage, 
thinking that it would be even better than 
lodging in the village. She imagined her white- 
washed bedroom full of moving green shades; 
the wood-smoke curling up among the trees; 
the majestic arms, swaying above her while she 
slept, and plumed with snow in winter. 

‘The trees behind her murmured consolingly; 
she reclined upon the sound. ‘“‘Remember, Miss 
Willowes” . . . “Remember,” murmured the 
trees, swaying their boughs muffled with heavy 
foliage. She remembered, and _ understood. 
When he came out of the wood, dressed like a 

210 


LOLLY WILLOWES 
gamekeeper, and speaking so quietly and simply, 
Satan had come to renew his promise and to 
reassure her. He had put on this shape that 
she might not fear him. Or would he have her 
to know that ‘to those who serve him he appears 
no longer as a hunter, but as a guardian? ‘This 
was the real Satan. And as for the other, 
whom her spirit had so impetuously disowned, 
she had done well to disown him, for he was 
nothing but an impostor, a charlatan, a dummy. 

Her doubts were laid to rest, and she walked 
back through the fields, picking mushrooms as 
she went. As she approached the village she 
heard Mr. Saunter’s cocks crowing, and saw the 
other cock, for ever watchful, for ever silent, 
spangle in the sun above the church tower. “he 
churchyard yews cast long shadows like open 
graves. Behind those white curtains slum- 
bered Mr. Jones, and dreamed, perhaps, of 
the Sabbath which he was not allowed to 
attend. 

As Laura passed through Mrs. Leak’s garden 
she remembered her first morning as a witch 
when she had gone out to give the kitten a run. 
The sunflowers had been cut off and given to 
the hens, but the scrubbing-brush was still 
propped on the kitchen window-sill. “That was 

! 211 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


three weeks ago. And Titus, like the scrub- 
bing-brush, was still there. 

During those three weeks Titus had de- 
manded a great deal of support; in fact, being 
a witch-aunt was about twice as taxing as be- 
ing an ordinary aunt, and if she had not known 
that the days were numbered she could scarcely 
have endured them. 

At her nephew’s request she made veils of 
butter-muslin weighed with blue beads to pro- 
tect his food and drink. ‘Titus insisted that the 
beads should be blue: blue was the colour of. 
the Immaculate Conception; and as pious Conti- 
nental mothers dedicate their children, so he 
would dedicate his milk and hope for the best. 
But no blue beads were to be found in the vil- 
lage, so Laura had to walk into Barleighs for 
them. ‘Titus was filled with gratitude, he came 
round on purpose to thank her and stayed to tea. 

He was no sooner gone than Mrs. Garland 
arrived. Mrs. Garland had seen the veils. She 
hoped that Mr. Willowes didn’t think she was 
to blame for the milk going sour. She could 
assure Miss Willowes that the jugs were mopped 
out with boiling water morning and evening. 
For her part, she couldn’t understand it at all. 
She was always anxious to give satisfaction, she 

212 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


said; but her manner suggested less anxiety 
to give than to receive. Laura soothed Mrs. 
Garland, and sat down to wait for Mr. Dod- 
bury. However, Mr. Dodbury contented him- 
self with frowning at that interfering young 
Willowes’s aunt, and turning the bull into the 
footpath field. Laura thought that the bull 
frowned too. 

‘Though veiled in butter-muslin, the milk 
continued to curdle. ‘Titus came in to say that 
he’d had an idea; in future, he would rely 
upon condensed milk out of a tin. Which sort 
did Aunt Lolly recommend? And would she 
make him a kettle-holder? Apparently tinned 
milk could resist the Devil, for all was peace 
until ‘Titus gashed his thumb on the raw edge 
ofatin. In spite of Laura’s first aid the wound 
festered, and for several days Titus wore a 
sling. Triumphant over pain he continued the 
Life of Fuseli. But the wounded thumb be- 
ing a right-hand thumb, the triumph involved 
an amanuensis. Laura hated ink, she marvelled 
that any one should have the constancy to write 
a whole book. She thought of Paradise Lost 
with a shudder, for it required even more con- 
stancy to write some one else’s book. Highly 
as she rated the sufferings of Milton’s daughters, 

213 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


she rated her own even higher, for she did not 
suppose that they had to be for ever jumping up 
and down to light the poet’s cigarette; and blank 
verse flowed, flowed majestically, she understood, 
from his lips, whereas ‘Titus dictated in prose, 
which was far harder to punctuate. 

Nor did it flow. Titus was not feeling at 
his best. He hated small bothers, and of late 
he had been seethed alive in them. Every day 
something went wrong, some fiddle-faddle little 
thing. All his ingenuity was wasted in cir- 
cumyvention; he had none left for Fuseli. 

Anyhow, dictation was only fit for oil-kings! 
He jumped up and dashed about the room with 
a fly-flap. Fly-flapping was a manly indoor 
sport, especially if one observed all the rules. 
The ceiling was marked out in squares like a 
chess-board, and while they stayed in their 
squares the flies could not be attacked. ‘The 
triangle described by the blue vase, the pink vase, 
and the hanging lamp was a Yellowstone Park, 
and so was the King’s Face, a difficult ruling, 
but Titus had decided that of two evils it was 
more tolerable that the royal countenance should 
be crawled over by flies than assaulted by the 
subject. All this from a left-handed adversary 
—the flies had nothing to complain of, in his 

214 ) 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


opinion. Laura owned his generosity, and sat, 
when she could, in the Yellowstone Park. 

By the time Titus had recovered the use of 
his right hand the flies had lost their sanctuaries 
one by one, and could not even call the King’s 
Face their own. ‘They swarmed in his sitting- 
room, attracted, Mrs. Garland supposed, by the 
memory of that nasty foreign cheese Mr. 
Willowes’s Mr. Humphries had brought with 
him when he came to stay. They swarmed in 
his bedroom also, and that—Mrs. Garland said 
—was what brought in the bats. Laura told 
Titus the belief that if a bat once entangles it- 
self in a woman’s flowing hair there is no rem- 
edy but to cut away hair and bat together. 
‘Titus turned pale. ‘That afternoon he went up 
to London to visit his hairdresser, and returned 
with hair cropped like a convict’s. 

All this had unsettled her victim a good deal; 
but it had not unseated him, and meanwhile it 
was sufficiently unsettling for her. So far, she 
thought, the scheme and its execution had been 
the kitten’s—she could recognise Vinegar’s 
playful methods. She gave him credit for do- 
ing his best. But he was young and inexperi- 
enced, this was probably his first attempt at 
serious persecution; it was not to be wondered 

215 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


at if his methods were a little sketchy. Now 
that the Devil had taken matters into his own 
hands—and of this she felt assured—all would 
soon be well. Well for her, well for Titus. 
Really, it was time that poor boy was released 
from his troubles. She felt complete confi- 
dence in the Devil, a confidence that the kitten 
had never inspired. ‘There was a tinge of 
gratuitous malice in Vinegar’s character; he 
was, as one says, rather a cat. She suspected 
him of meditating a scratch which would give 
Titus blood-poisoning. She remembered with 
uneasiness what cats are said to do to sleeping 
infants, and every night she was careful to im- 
prison Vinegar in her bedroom, a useless pre- 
caution since he had come in by the keyhole and 
might as easily go out by it. ‘The Devil would 
get rid of Titus more speedily, more kindly 
(he had no reason to be anything but kind: she 
could not imagine Titus being of the smallest 
interest to Satan), more economically. There 
would be no catastrophe, no pantechnicon dis- 
plays of flood or fire. He would proceed dis- 
creetly and surely, like a gamekeeper going his 
rounds by night; he would remove ‘Titus 
as imperturbably as Dunlop had removed 
the beech-leaf. She could sit back quite com- 
216 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


fortably now, and wait for it to happen. 

When Titus next appeared and complained 
that he had been kept awake for two nights 
running by a mouse gnawing the leg of his bed- 
stead, Laura was most helpful. They went to 
Mrs. Trumpet’s to buy a mouse-trap, but as 
Mrs. Trumpet only kept cheese they walked 
very pleasantly by field-paths into Barleighs, 
where Denby’s stores had a larger range of 
groceries. During their walk ‘Titus recalled 
anecdotes illustrative of mice from Soup from 
a Sausage Peg, and propounded a scheme for 
defending his bed by a catskin valance. ‘The 
day was fine, and at intervals Titus would stop 
and illustrate the landscape with possessive 
gestures. 

He was particularly happy. He had not 
enjoyed himself so much for some time. ‘The 
milk and the mice and the flies had checked his 
Spirits; he was not doing justice to Fuseli, and 
when he went out for long.encouraging walks 
an oppressed feeling went with him. ‘Twice 
or thrice he had felt horribly frightened, 
though at what he could not tell. “The noise 
of two iron hurdles grating against each other 
in the wind, a dead tree with branches that 
looked like antlers, the stealthy movement of 

a7 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


the sun towards the horizon: quite ordinary 
things like these were able to disquiet him. 

He fell into the habit of talking aloud to 
himself. He would reason with appearances. 
“T see you, old Horny,” he said to the dead tree. 
And once, as dusk pursued him homeward, he 
began repeating: 


As one that on a lonesome road 
Doth walk in fear and dread, 

And having once turned round, walks on, 
And turns no more his head; 

Because he knows a frightful fiend 
Doth close behind him tread: 


when the sound of a crackling twig made every 
nerve in his body stiffen with terror. Some 
impulse not his own snatched him round in the 
path, only to see old Luxmoor going out with 
his snares. Old Luxmoor touched his cap and 
grinned in an embarrassed way. Every one 
knew that Luxmoor poached, but it was not- 
polite to catch him at it. He did not appear 
to have overheard ‘Titus or noticed his start of 
terror. But there had been one instant before 
recognition when Titus had almost known what 
he dreaded to see. 

So it was pleasant to find that the company 

218 


LOLUY wrelLowes 


of his aunt could exorcise these ghostly enmities. 
Clearly, there was nothing in it. To-morrow 
he would go for a long walk by himself. 

Laura also went for a walk that afternoon. 
It was a hot day, so hot and still that it felt 
like a Sunday. She could not do better than 
follow the example of the savages in Robinson 
Crusoe: go up on to a hill-top and say O! No 
pious savage could have ejaculated O! more 
devoutly than she did; for the hill-top was 
scattered over with patches of that small honey- 
scented flower called Tailors’ Needles, and in 
conjunction with the austere outlines of the 
landscape this perfume was exquisitely sweet 
and surprising. She found a little green pit 
and sat down in it, leaning her back against the 
short firm turf. Ensconced in her private 
warmth and stillness she had almost fallen 
asleep when a moving figure on the opposite 
hillside caught her attention. lLaura’s grey 
eyes were very keen-sighted, she soon recog- 
nised that long stride and swinging gait. “The 
solitary walker was ‘Titus. 

‘There is an amusing sense of superiority in 
seeing and remaining unseen. Laura sat up in 
her form and watched ‘Titus attentively. He 
looked very small, human, and scrabbly, travers- 

219 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


ing that imperturbable surface. With such a 
large slope to wander upon, it was faintly comic 
to see Titus keeping so neatly to the path; the 
effect was rather as if he were being taken for 
a walk upon a string. 

Further on the path was lost in a tangle 
of brambles and rusty foxglove stems which 
marked the site of Folly Wood, a larch planta- 
tion cut down during the war. In her map 
the wood had still been green. She had looked 
for it on one of her early explorations, and not 
finding it had felt defrauded. Her eyes now 
dwelt on the bramble tangle with annoyance. 
It was untidy, and fretted the hillside like a 
handful of rough-cast thrown on to a smooth 
wall. She turned back her gaze to see how 
Titus was getting on. It struck her that he 
was behaving rather oddly. ‘Though he kept 
to the path he was walking almost lke a 
drunken man or an idiot, now hurrying his 
pace, now reforming it into a staid deliberation 
that was certainly not his natural gait. Quite 
abruptly he began to run. He ran faster and 
faster, his feet striving on the slippery turf. 
He reached the outskirts of Folly Wood, and 
Laura could gauge the roughness of the going 
from his leaps and stumbles. Midway through 

220 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


the wood he staggered and fell full-length. 

“A rabbit-hole,” she said. “Now I suppose 
he’s sprained his ankle.” 

But before any thought of compunction 
could mitigate the rather scornful bewilderment 
with which she had been a spectator of these 
antics, Titus was up again, and behaving more 
oddly than ever. No amount of sprained ankle 
could warrant those raving gestures with which 
he beat himself, and beat the air. He seemed 
to be fending off an invisible volley-of fisticuffs, 
for now he ducked his head, now he leaped to 
one side, now he threatened, now he quailed 
before a fresh attack. At last he made off 
with shambling speed, reeling and gesticulating 
as though his whole body bellowed with pain 
and fear. He reached the summit of the 
hill; for a moment he was silhouetted against 
the sky-line in a final convulsion of distress; 
then he was gone. 

Laura felt as if she were releasing her gaze 
from a telescope. Her glance strayed about 
the landscape. She frowned and looked in- 
quiringly from side to side, not able to credit 
her eyes. Blandly unconscious, the opposite 
hillside confronted her with its familiar face. 
A religious silence filled the valley. As the 

221 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


untroubled air had received ‘Titus’s roarings 
and damnings (for it was obvious that he had 
both roared and damned) without concerning 
itself to transmit them to her hearing, so her 
vision had absorbed his violent pantomime with- 
out concerning itself to alarm her brain. She 
could not reason about what she had seen; she 
could scarcely stir herself to feel any curiosity, 
and still less any sympathy. Like a masque of 
bears and fantastic shapes, it had seemed 
framed only to surprise and delight. 

But that, she knew, was not Satan’s way. 
He was not in the habit of bestowing these 
gratuitous peep-shows upon his servants, he was 
above the human weakness of doing things for 
fun; and if he exhibited ‘Titus dancing upon 
the hillside like a cat on hot bricks, she might 
be sure that it was all according to plan. It 
behoved her to be serious and attend, instead of 
accepting it all in this spirit of blank entertain-. 
ment. Even as a matter of bare civility 
she ought to find out what had happened. Be- 
sides, “Titus might require her ministrations. 
She got up, and began to walk back to the vil- 
lage. 

‘Titus, she reflected, would almost certainly 
have gone home. Even if he did not run all 

222 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


the way he would by now have had time to 
settle down and get over the worst of his dis- 
turbance. A kind of decency forbade her to 
view too immediately the dismay of her victim. 
Titus unmenaced, ‘Titus invading her quiet and 
straddling over her peace of mind, was a very 
different thing from Titus melting and squirm- 
ing before the fire of her resentment. Now 
that she was walking to his assistance she felt 
quite sorry for him. ‘y nephew who is 
plagued by the Devil was as much an object for 
affectionate aunt-like interest as my nephew 
who has an attack of measles. She did not take 
the present affliction more seriously than she had 
taken those of the past. With time, and a 
change of air, she was confident that he would 
make a complete recovery. 

As for her own share in the matter, she felt 
no shame at all. It had pleased Satan to come 
to her aid. Considering carefully, she did not 
see who else would have done so. Custom, 
public opinion, law, church, and_ state—all 
would have shaken their massive heads against 
her plea, and sent her back to bondage. 

She reached Great Mop about five o’clock. 
As she turned up Mrs, Leak’s garden-path, 
Titus bounded from the porch. 

229 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


“There you are!” he exclaimed. “We have 
just come to have tea with you.” 

She perceived that Titus was not alone. In 
the porch playing with the kitten was Pandora 
Williams, Pandora Williams whom ‘Titus had 
invited to play the rebeck at the Flower Show. — 
Before Laura could welcome her Titus was 
exclaiming again. 

“Such an afternoon as I’ve had. Such ad- 
ventures! First I fell into a wasps’-nest, and 
then I got engaged to Pandora.” 

So that was it. It was wasps. Wasps were 
the invisible enemies that had beset and routed 
him on the hill-side. O Beelzebub, God of 
flies! But why was he now going to marry 
Pandora Williams? 

“The wops-nest was in Folly Wood. I 
tripped up, and fell smack on top of it. My 
God, I thought I should die! They got into 
my ears, and down my neck, and up my trou- 
sers, they were everywhere, as thick as spikes 
in soda-water. I ran for my life, I ran nearly 
all the way home, and most of them came with 
me, either inside or out. And when I rushed 
up the street calling in an exhausted voice for 
onions, there was Pandora!” 

bee 


LOLLY WILLOWES 
“T had been invited to tea,” said Pandora 
rather primly. 

“Yes, and I’d forgotten it, and gone out for 
a walk. Pandora, if ’d had my deserts, you 
would have scorned me, and left me to perish. 
Pandora, I shall never forget your magnani- 
mous way of behaving. “That was what did 
it really. One has to offer marriage to a young 
woman who has picked dead wasps out of one’s 
armpit.” 

Laura had never seen Titus so excited. His 
face was flushed, his voice was loud, the pupils 
of his eyes were extraordinarily dilated. But 
how much of this was due to love and how 
much to wasps and witchcraft it was impossible 
to say. And was Pandora part of the witch- 
craft too, a sort of queen wasp whose sting was 
mortal balm? Why should Titus offer her 
marriage? Why should Pandora accept it? 
They had always been such friends. 

Laura turned to the girl to see how she was 
taking it. Pandora’s smooth cheeks and smooth 
lappets of black hair seemed to shed calm like 
an unwavering beam of moonlight. But at 
Laura’s good wishes she started, and began nerv- 
ously to counter them with explanations and 

205 


LOLLY WILLOWES 
apologies for coming to Laura’s rooms for tea. 
She had dropped ‘Titus’s teapot, and broken it. 
Laura was not surprised that she had dropped 
the teapot. It was clear to her that Pandora’s 
emotions that afternoon had been much more 
vehement than anything that Titus had experi- 
enced in his mental uproar. How well— 
thought Laura—she has hidden her feelings all 
this time! How well she is hiding them now! 

These fine natures, she knew, always found 
comfort in cutting bread-and-butter. Pandora 
welcomed the suggestion. She covered three 
large plates, and would have covered a fourth 
if the butter had not given out. There were 
some ginger-bread nuts as well, and a few 
bull’s-eyes. Mrs. Leak must have surmised a 
romance. She marked her sense of the occa- 
sion by the tea, which was almost purple—as_ 
strong as wedding-cake, ‘Titus said. 

It was a savagely plain tea. But had it con- 
sisted of cocoa and ship’s-biscuit, Laura might 
have offered it without a qualm to guests so 
much absorbed by their proper emotions. ‘Titus 
talked incessantly, and Pandora ate with the 
stealthy persistence of a bitch that gives suck. 
Meanwhile Laura looked at the new Mr. and 
Mrs. Willowes. ‘They would do very well, 

226 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


she decided. Young as she was, Pandora had 
already the air of a family portrait; such looks, 
such characters change little, for they are inde- 
pendent of time. And undoubtedly she was 
very much in love with Titus. While he 
talked she watched his face with the utmost at- 
tention, though she did not seem to hear what 
he was saying. ‘Titus, too, must be consider- 
ably in love. Despite the unreality of his be- 
haviour, and a swelled nose, his happiness gave 
him an almost romantic appearance. Perhaps 
it was that too recently she had seen him danc- 
ing on the Devil’s strings to be able to take him 
quite seriously; perhaps she was old-maidishly 
scornful of the authenticity of anything that a 
man may say or do; but at the back of her mind 
Laura felt that Titus was but a proxy wooer, 
the ambassador of an imperious dynastic will; 
and that the real match was made between 
Pandora and Lady Place. 

Anyhow, it was all very suitable, and she 
must be content to leave it at that. “The car 
from the Lamb and Flag was waiting to take 
them to the station. itus was going back to 
London with Pandora to see her people, as 
Pandora had refused to face their approval 
alone. The Williamses lived pleasantly on 


227 
§ 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


Campden Hill, and were typical of the best 
class of Londoners, being almost indistinguish- 
able from people living pleasantly in the coun- 
try. What, indeed, could be more countrified 
than to be in town during September? For a 
moment Laura feared that she would be obliged 
to travel to London. ‘The lovers had insisted 
upon her company as far as the station. 

“You must come,” said Titus. ‘There will 
be all sorts of things I shall remember to ask 
you to do for me. I can’t remember them 
now, but I shall the moment the car starts. I 
always do.” 

Laura knew this to be very truth. Never- 
theless she stood out against going until Pandora 
manoeuvred her into a corner and said in a 
desperate whisper: “O Miss Willowes, for 
God’s sake, please come. You’ve no idea how 
awful it is being left alone with some one you 
love.” 

Laura replied: “Very well. Ill come as a 
thank-offering.” 

Pandora’s sense of humour could just con- 
trive a rather castaway smile. 

They got into the car. “There was no time 
to spare, and the driver took them along the 
winding lanes at top speed, sounding his horn 

228 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


incessantly. It was a closed car, and they sat 
in it in perfect silence all the way to the station. 
Before the car had drawn up in the station yard 
Titus leaped out and began to pay the driver. 
Then he looked wildly about for the train. 
There was no train in sight. It had not come 
In yet. 

When Laura had seen them off and gone 
back to the station yard she found that in his 
excitement Titus had dismissed the driver with- 
out considering how his aunt was to get back to 
Great Mop. However, it didn’t matter—the 
bus started for Barleighs at half-past eight, and 
from Barleighs she could walk on for the rest 
of the way. ‘This gave her an hour and a half 
to spend in Wickendon. A sensible way of 
passing the time would be to eat something 
before her return journey; but she was not 
hungry, and the fly-blown cafés in the High 
Street were not tempting. She bought some 
fruit, and turned up an alley between garden 
walls in search of a field where she could sit 
and eat it in peace. ‘The alley soon changed to 
an untidy lane and then to a cinder-track 
running steeply uphill between high hedges. 
A municipal kindliness had supplied at intervals 
iron benches, clamped and riveted into the 

229 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


cinders. But no one reposed on them, and the 
place was unpeopled save by swarms of midges. 
Laura was hot and breathless by the time she 
reached the top of the hill and came out upon 
a bare grassy common. Here was an obvious 
place to sit down and gasp, and as there were 
no iron benches to deter her, she did so. But 
she immediately forgot her exhaustion, so ar- 
resting was the sight that lay before her. 

The cinder-track led to a small enclosure, 
full of cypresses, yews, clipped junipers and 
weeping-willows. Rising from this funereal 
plumage was an assortment of minarets, gilded 
cupolas and obelisks. She stared at this phen- 
nomenon, so byronic in conception, so spick and 
span in execution, and sprouting so surpris- 
ingly from the mild Chiltern landscape, com- 
pletely at a loss to account for it. Then she 
remembered: it was the Maulgrave Folly. She 
had read of it in the guide-book, and of its 
author, Sir Ralph Maulgrave, the Satanic 
Baronet, the libertine, the atheist, who drank 
out of a skull, who played away his mistress 
and pistolled the winner, who rode about 
Buckinghamshire on a zebra, whose conversa- 
tion had been too much for Thomas Moore. 
“This bad and eccentric character,” the guide- 

230 


LOLLY WILLOWES 

book said, disinfecting his memory with ra- 
tional amusement. Grown old, he had amused 
himself by elaborating a burial-place which was 
to be an epitome of his eclectic and pessimistic 
opinions. He must, thought Laura, have spent 
many hours on this hillside, watching the 
masons and directing the gardeners where to 
plant his cypresses. And afterwards he would 
be wheeled away in his bath-chair, for, pace 
the guide-book, at a comparatively early age he 
lost the use of his legs. 

Poor gentleman, how completely he had mis- 
understood the Devil! ‘The plethoric gilt cu- 
polas winked in the setting sun. For all their 
bad taste, they were perfectly respectable—cu- 
polas and minarets and cypresses, all had a sleek 
and well-cared-for look. ‘They had an assured 
income, nothing could disturb their calm. The 
silly, vain, passionate heart that lay buried 
there had bequeathed a sum of money for their 
perpetual upkeep. “The Satanic Baronet who 
mocked at eternal life and designated this place 
as a lasting testimony of his disbelief had con- 
trived to immortalise himself as a laughing- 
stock. 

It was ungenerous. ‘The dead man had been 
pilloried long enough; it was high time that 

231 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


Maulgrave’s Folly should be left to fall into 
decent ruin and decay. And instead of that, 
even at this moment it was being trimmed up 
afresh. She felt a thrill of anger as she saw 
a gardener come out of the enclosure, carrying 
a flag basket and a pair of shears. He came 
towards her, and something about the rather 
slouching and prowling gait struck her as being 
familiar. She looked more closely, and recog- 
nised Satan. 

“How can you!” she said, when he was 
within speaking distance. He, of all people, 
should be more compassionate to the shade of 
Sir Ralph. 

He feigned not to hear her. 

“Would you care to go over the Folly, 
ma’am!” he inquired. “It’s quite a curiosity. 
Visitors come out from London to see it.” 

Laura was not going to be fubbed off like 
this. He might pretend not to recognise her, 
but she would jog his memory. 

“So you are a grave-keeper as well as a 
game-keeper! ” 

“The Council employ me to cut the bushes,” 
he answered. 

“O Satan!” she exclaimed, hurt by his 
equivocations. “Do you always hide?” 

232 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


With the gesture of a man who can never 
hold out against women, he yielded and sat 
down beside her on the grass. 

Laura felt a momentary embarrassment. 
She had long wished for a reasonable conversa- 
tion with her Master, but now that her wish 
seemed about to be granted, she felt rather at a 
loss for an opening. At last she observed: 

“Titus has gone.” 

“Indeed? Isn’t that rather sudden? It 
was only this afternoon that I met him.” 

“Yes, I saw you meeting him. At least, I 
saw him meeting you.” 

“Just so. It is remarkable,” he added, as 
though he were politely parrying her thought, 
“how invisible one is on these bare green hill- 
sides.” 

“Or in these thick brown woods,” said 
Laura rather sternly. 

This sort of satanic playfulness was no 
novelty; Vinegar often behaved in the same 
fashion, leaping about just out of reach when 
she wanted to catch him and shut him up 
indoors. 

“Or in these thick brown woods,” he con- 
curred. “Folly Wood is especially dense.” _ 

eT ap 7? 

235 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


“Ts, Once a wood, always a wood.” 

Once a wood, always a wood. ‘The words 
rang true, and she sat silent, considering them. 
Pious Asa might hew down the groves, but as 
far as the Devil was concerned he hewed in 
vain. Once a wood, always a wood: trees 
where he sat would crowd into a shade. And 
people going by in broad sunlight would be 
aware of slow voices overhead, and a sudden 
chill would fall upon their flesh. ‘Then, if 
like her they had a natural leaning towards the 
Devil, they would linger, listening about them 
with half-closed eyes and averted senses; but 
if they were respectable people like Henry 
and Caroline they would talk rather louder and 
hurry on. ‘There remaineth a rest for the 
people of God (somehow the thought of the 
Devil always propelled her mind to the Holy 
Scriptures), and for the other people, the people 
of Satan, there remained a rest also. Held 
fast in that strong memory no wild thing could 
be shaken, no secret covert destroyed, no haunt 
of shadow and silence laid open. The goods 
yard at Paddington, for instance—a savage 
place! as holy and enchanted as ever it had 
been. Not one of the monuments and tinker- 
ings of man could impose on the satanic mind. 


234 


LOLLY WILLOWES 
The Vatican and the Crystal Palace, and all 


the neat human nest-boxes in rows, Balham 
and Fulham and the Cromwell Road—he saw 
through them, they went flop like card-houses, 
the bricks were earth again, and the steel girders 
burrowed shrieking into the veins of earth, and 
the dead timber was restored to the ghostly 
groves. Wolves howled through the streets of 
Paris, the foxes played in the throne-room of 
Schénbrunn, and in the basement at Apsley 
‘Terrace, the mammoth slowly revolved, tram- 
pling out its lair. 

“Then I needn’t really have come here to 
meet you!” she exclaimed. 

“Did you?” 

“T didn’t know I did. I thought I came 
here to be in the country, and to escape being 
an aunt.” 

“Titus came here to write a book on Fuseli, 
and to enjoy himself.” 

“Titus! I can’t believe you wanted him.” 

“But you believe I wanted you.” 

Rather taken aback she yet answered the 
Devil honestly. 

“Yes! I do believe you wanted me. ‘Though 
really I don’t know why you should.” 

A slightly malevolent smile crossed the 


235 


LOLLY WILLOWES 
Devil’s face. For some reason or other her 
modesty seemed to have nettled him. 

“Some people would say that you had flung 
yourself at my head.” 

“Other people,” she retorted, “‘would say 
that you had been going about seeking to de- 
vour me.” 

“Exactly. JI even roared that night. But 
you were asleep while I roared. Only the 
hills heard me triumphing over my spoil.” 

Laura said: “I wish I could really believe 
that.” 

“I wish you could, too,” he answered af- 
fably; “you would feel so comfortable and im- 
portant. But you won’t, although it is much 
more probable than you might suppose.” 

Laura stretched herself out on the turf and 
pillowed her head on her arm. 

“Nothing could feel more comfortable than 
I do, now that Titus is gone,” she said. “And 
as for importance, I never wish to feel import- 
ant again. JI had enough of that when I was 
an aunt.” 

“Well, youre a witch now.” 

“SV esi ost s ebareallveamcarenct 1uree 

“Trrevocably.” 

His voice was so perfectly grave that she 


236 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


began to suspect him of concealing some amuse- 
ment. When but a moment before he had 
jested she had thought a deeper meaning lay 
beneath his words, she almost believed that his 
voice had roared over her in the thunder. If 
he had spoken without feigning then, she had 
not heard him; for he had stopped her ears 
with a sleep. 

_ “Why do you sigh?” he asked. 

“Did I sigh? I’m puzzled, that’s all. You 
see, although I’m a witch, and although you 
sitting here beside me tell me so, I can’t really 
appreciate it, take it in. It all seems perfectly 
natural.” 

“That is because you are in my power. No 
servant of mine can feel remorse, or doubt, or 
surprise. You may be quite easy, Laura: you 
will never escape me, for you can never wish 
(6. 

“Yes, I can quite well believe that; I’m sure 
I shall never wish to escape you. But you are 
a mysterious Master.” 

“You seem to me rather an exacting servant. 
I have shaped myself like a jobbing gardener, I 
am sitting on the grass beside you (Ill have one 
of your apples if I may. They are a fruit I 
am particularly fond of), I am doing every- 


237 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


thing in my power to be agreeable and re- 
assuring . . . What more do you want?” 

“That is exactly what I complain of. You 
are too lifelike to be natural; why, it might be 
Goethe’s Conversations with Eckermann. No! 
if I am really a witch, treat me as such. 
Satisfy my curiosity. Tell me about your- 
AB ig 

“Tell me first what you think,” he answered. 

“T think’—she began cautiously (while he 
hid his cards it would not do to show all hers) 
—‘T think you are a kind of black knight, 
wandering about and succouring decayed gen- 
tlewomen.” 

*“There are warlocks too, remember.” 

“T can’t take warlocks so seriously, not as a 
class. It is we witches who count. We have 
more need of you. Women have such vivid 
imaginations, and lead such dull lives. ‘Their 
pleasure in life is so soon over; they are so de- 
pendent upon others, and their dependence so 
soon becomes a nuisance. Do you _ under- 
stand?” 

He was silent. She continued, slowly, knit- 
ting her brows in the effort to make clear to 
herself and him the thought that was in her 
mind: 


238 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


“It’s like this. When I think of witches, I 
seem to see all over England, all over Europe, 
women living and growing old, as common as 
blackberries, and as unregarded. I see them, 
wives and sisters of respectable men, chapel 
members, and blacksmiths, and small farmers, 
and Puritans. In places like Bedfordshire, the 
sort of country one sees from the train. You 
know. Well, there they were, there they are, 
child-rearing, house-keeping, hanging washed 
dishcloths on currant bushes; and for diversion 
each other’s silly conversation, and listening to 
men talking together in the way that men talk 
and women listen. Quite different to the way 
women talk, and men listen, if they listen at 
all. And all the time being thrust further 
down into dullness when the one thing all 
women hate is to be thought dull. And on 
Sunday they put on plain stuff gowns and 
starched white coverings on their heads and 
necks—the Puritan ones did—and walked across 
the fields to chapel, and listened to the sermon. 
Sin and Grace, and God and the (she 
stopped herself just in time), “‘and St. Paul. 


All men’s things, like politics, or mathematics. 
Nothing for them except subjection and plait- 
ing their hair. And on the way back they lis- 


lees 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


tened to more talk. ‘Talk about the sermon, 
or war, or cock-fighting; and when they got 
back, there were the potatoes to be cooked for 
dinner. It sounds very petty to complain about, 
but I tell you, that sort of thing settles down on 
one like a fine dust, and by and by the dust 
is age, settling down. Settling down! You 
never die, do you? No doubt that’s far worse, 
but there is a dreadful kind of dreary immor- 
tality about being settled down on by one day 
after another. And they think how they were 
young once, and they see new young women, 
just like what they were, and yet as surprising 
as if it had never happened before, like trees 
in spring. But they are like trees towards the 
end of summer, heavy and dusty, and nobody 
finds their leaves surprising, or notices them 
till they fall off. If they could be passive and 
unnoticed, it wouldn’t matter. But they must 
be active, and still not noticed. Doing, doing, 
doing, till mere habit scolds at them like a 
housewife, and rouses them up—when they 
might sit in their doorways and think—to be 
doing still!” 

She paused, out of breath. She had never 
made such a long speech in the whole of her 
life, nor spoken with such passion. She scarcely 

240 


LOLLY WILLOWES 
knew what she had said, and felt giddy and un- 


accustomed, as though she had been thrown into 
the air and had suddenly begun to fly. 

The Devil was silent, and looked thought- 
fully at the ground. He seemed to be rather 
touched by all this. She continued, for she 
feared that if she did not go on talking she 
would grow ashamed at having said so much. 

“Is it true that you can poke the fire with a 
stick of dynamite in perfect safety? I used to 
take my nieces to scientific lectures, and I 
believe I heard it then. Anyhow, even, if it 
isn’t true.of dynamite, it’s true of women. 
But they know they are dynamite, and long for 
the concussion that may justify them. Some 
may get religion, then they’re all right, I ex- 
pect. But for the others, for so many, what 
can there be but witchcraft? ‘That strikes 
them real. Even if other people still find them 
quite safe and usual, and go on poking with 
them, they know in their hearts how danger- 
ous, how incalculable, how extraordinary they 
are. Even if they never do anything with 
their witchcraft, they know it’s there—ready! 
Respectable countrywomen keep their grave- 
clothes in a corner of the chest of drawers, 
hidden away, and when they want a little com- 

241 


LOLLY WILLOWES 
fort they go and look at them, and think that 


once more, at any rate, they will be worth 
dressing with care. But the witch keeps her 
cloak of darkness, her dress embroidered with 
signs and planets; that’s better worth looking 
at. And think, Satan, what a compliment you 
pay her, pursuing her soul, lying in wait for it, 
following it through all its windings, crafty 
and patient and secret like a gentleman out kill- 
ing tigers. Her soul—when no one else would 
give a look at her body even! And they are 
all so accustomed, so sure of her! ‘They say: 
‘Dear Lolly! What shall we give her for 
her birthday this year? Perhaps a hot-water 
bottle. Or what about a nice black lace scarf? 
Or a new workbox? Her old one is nearly 
worn out.’ But you say: ‘Come here, my 
bird! I will give you the dangerous black 
night to stretch your wings in, and poisonous 
berries to feed on, and a nest of bones and 
thorns, perched high up in danger where no one 


> That’s why we become 


can climb to it. 
witches: to show our scorn of pretending life’s 
a safe business, to satisfy our passion for ad- 
venture. It’s not malice, or wickedness—well, 
perhaps it zs wickedness, for most women love 
that—but certainly not malice, not wanting to 


242 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


plague cattle and make horrid children spout up 
pins and—what is it?—‘blight the genial bed, 
Of course, given the power, one may go in 
for that sort of thing, either in self-defence, 
or just out of playfulness. But it’s a poor 
twopenny house-wifely kind of witchcraft, 
black magic is, and white magic is no better. 
One doesn’t become a witch to run round being 
harmful, or to run round being helpful either, 
a district Visitor on a broomstick. It’s to es- 
cape all that—to have a life of one’s own, not 
an existence doled out to you by others, char- 
itable refuse of their thoughts, so many ounces 
of stale bread of life a day, the workhouse 
dietary is scientifically calculated to support 
life. As for the witches who can only express 
themselves by pins and bed-blighting, they have 
been warped into that shape by the dismal lives 
they’ve led. ‘Think of Miss Carloe! She’s a 
typical witch, people would say. Really she’s 
the typical genteel spinster who’s spent herself 
being useful to people who didn’t want her. 
If, you’d got her younger she’d never be like 
that.” 

“You seem to know a good deal about 
witches,” remarked Satan. “But you were go- 
ing to say what you thought about me.” 


243 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


She shook her head. 

“Go on,” he said encouragingly. “You 
compared me to a knight-errant. That's very 
pretty. I believe you have also compared me 
to a hunter, a poaching sort of hunter, prowling 
through the woods after dark. Not so flatter- 
ing to my vanity as the knight-errant, but more 
accurate, I daresay.” 

“O Satan! Why do you encourage me to 
talk when you know all my thoughts?” 

“TI encourage you to talk, not that I may 
know all your thoughts, but that you may. 
Go on, Laura. Don’t be foolish, What do 
you think about me?” 

“T don’t know,” she said honestly. “TI don’t 
think I do think. I only rhapsodise and make 
comparisons. You’re beyond me, my thought 
flies off you like the centrifugal hypothesis. 
And after this I shall be more at a loss than 
ever, for I like you so much, I find you so kind 
and sympathetic. But it is obvious that you 
can’t be merely a benevolent institution. No, I. 
must be your witch in blindness.” 

“You don’t take warlocks so seriously, I 
know. But you might find their point of view 
illuminating. As it’s a spiritual difficulty, why 
not consult Mr. Jones?” 


244 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


“Poor Mr. Jones!” Laura began to laugh. 
“He can’t call his soul his own.” 

“Hush! Have you forgotten that he has 
sold it to me?” 

“Then why did you mortgage it to Mr. 
Gurdon? Mr. Jones isn’t even allowed to 
attend the Sabbath.” 

“You are a little dense at times. Hasn’t it 
occurred to you that other people might share 
your sophisticated dislike for the Sabbath?” 

“You don’t attend the Sabbath either, if it 
comes to that.” 

“How do you know? Don’t try to put me 
in your pocket, Laura. You are not my only 
conquest, and I am not a human master to 
have favourites among my servants. All are 
souls that come to my net. I apologise for the 
pun, but it is apt.” 

She had been rebuked, but she did not feel 
particularly abashed. It was true, then, what 
she had read of the happy relationship between 
the Devil and his servants. If Euphan Macal- 
zean had rated him—why, so, at a pinch, might 
she. Other things that she had read might 
also be true, she thought, things that she had 
till now been inclined to reject. So easy- 
going a Master who had no favourites among 


245 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


his servants might in reality attend the Sabbath, 
might unbend enough to eat black-puddings at 
a picnic without losing his dignity. 

“That offensive. young man at the Sabbath,” 
she remarked, “I know he wasn’t you. Who 
was he?” 

“He’s one of these brilliant young authors,” 
replied the Devil. “I believe Titus knows 
him. He sold me his soul on the condition that 
once a week he should be without doubt the 
most important person at a party.” 

“Why didn’t he sell his soul in order to be- 
come a great writer? Then he could have had 
the party into the bargain.” 

“He preferred to take a short-cut, you see.” 

She didn’t see. But she was too proud to 
inquire further, especially as Satan was now 
smiling at her as if she were a pet lamb. 

“What did Mr. Jones an 

“That’s enough! ‘You can ask him that 
yourself, when you take your lessons in demon- 


ology.” 

“Do you suppose for one moment that Mr. 
Gurdon would let me sit closeted with Mr. 
Jones taking lessons in plain needlework even? 
He would put his face in at the window and 
say: ‘How much longer are them Mothers to 


246 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


be kept waiting?’ or: ‘I should like to know 
what your reverence is doing about that there 
dung?’ or: ‘I suppose you know that the 
cowman’s girl may go off at any minute.’ 
And then he’d take him down to the shrubbery 
and scold him. My heart bleeds for the poor 
old gentleman!” | 

“Mr. Jones”—Satan spoke demurely—‘will 
have his reward in another life.” 

Laura was silent. She gazed at the Maul- 
grave Folly with what she could feel to be a 
pensive expression. But her mind was a blank. 

“A delicate point, you say? Perhaps it is 
bad taste on my part to jest about it.” 

A midge settled on Laura’s wrist. She 
smacked at it. 

“Dead!” said Satan. 

The word dropped into her mind like a peb- 
ble thrown into a pond. She had heard it so 
often, and now she heard it once more. ‘The 
same waves of thought circled outwards, waves 
of startled thought spreading out on all sides, 
rocking the shadows of familiar things, blur- 
ring the steadfast pictures of trees and clouds, 
circling outward one after the other, each 
wave more listless, more imperceptible than the 
last, until the pool was still again. 


247 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


There might be some questions that even the 
Devil could not answer. She turned her eyes 
to him with their question. 

Satan had risen to his feet. He picked up 
the flag basket and the shears, and made ready 
to go. 

“Ts it time?” asked Laura. 

He nodded, and smiled. 

She got up in her turn, and began to shake 
the dust off her skirt. “Then she prodded a 
hole for the bag which had held the apples, and 
buried it tidily, smoothing the earth over the 
hole. ‘This took a little time to do, and when 
she looked round for Satan, to say good-bye, he 
was out of sight. 

Seeing that he was gone she sat down again, 
for she wanted to think him over. A pleasant 
conversation, though she had done most of the 
talking. ‘The tract of flattened grass at her 
side showed where he had rested, and there was 
the rampion flower he had held in his hand. 
Grass that has been lain upon has always a 
rather popular bank-holidayish look, and even 
the Devil’s lair was not exempt from this. It 
was as though the grass were in league with 
him, faithfully playing-up to his pose of being 
a quite everyday phenomenon. Not a blade of 

248 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


grass was singed, not a clover-leaf blasted, and 
the rampion flower was withering quite natu- 
rally; yet he who had sat there was Satan, the 
author of all evil, whose thoughts were a dark- 
ness, whose roots went down into the pit. 
There was no action too mean for him, no in- 
strument too petty; he would go into a milk- 
jug to work mischief. And presently he would 
emerge, imperturbable, inscrutable, enormous 
with the dignity of natural behaviour and un- 
trammelled self-fulfilment. 

‘To be this—a character truly integral, a per- 
petual flowering of power and, cunning from. 
an undivided will—was enough to constitute 
the charm and majesty of the Devil. No cloak 
of terrors was necessary to enlarge that stature, 
and to suppose him capable of speculation or 
metaphysic would be like offering to crown him 
with a few casual straws. Very probably he 
was quite stupid. When she had asked him 
about death he had got up and gone away, 
which looked as if he did not know much more 
about it than she did herself: indeed, being im- 
mortal, it was unlikely that he would know as 
much. Instead, his mind brooded immovably 
over the landscape and over the natures of men, 
an unforgetting and unchoosing mind. That, 


249 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


of course—and she jumped up in her excite- 
ment and began to wave her arms—was why he 
was the Devil, the enemy of souls. His mem- 
ory was too long, too retentive; there was no 
appeasing its witness, no hoodwinking it with 
the present; and that was why at one stage of 
civilization people said he was the embodiment 
of all evil, and then a little later on that he 
didn’t exist. 

For a moment Laura thought that she had 
him: and on the next, as though he had tricked 
himself out of her grasp, her thoughts were 
scattered by the sudden consciousness of a sort 
of jerk in the atmosphere. The sun had gone 
down, sliding abruptly behind the hills. In 
that case the bus would have gone too, she 
might as well hope to catch the one as the other. 
First Satan, then the sun and the bus—adieu, 
mes gens! ‘Nith affectionate unconcern she 
seemed to be waving them farewell, pleased to 
be left to herself, left to enter into this new 
independence acknowledged by their departure. 

The night was at her disposal. She might 
walk back to Great Mop and arrive very late:. 
or she might sleep out and not trouble to arrive 
until to-morrow. Whichever she did Mrs. 
Leak would not mind. ‘That was one of the 

250 


LOLLY WILLOWES 


advantages of dealing with witches; they do 
not mind if you are a little odd in your ways, 
frown if you are late for meals, fret if you 
are out all night, pry and commiserate when at 
length you return. Lovely to be with people 
who prefer their thoughts to yours, lovely to 
live at your own sweet will, lovely to sleep out 
all night! She had quite decided, now, to do 
so. It was an adventure, she had never done 
such a thing before, and yet it seemed most 
natural. She would not sleep here: Wicken- 
don was too close. But presently, later on, 
when she felt inclined to, she would, wander 
off in search of a suitable dry ditch or an ac- 
commodating loosened haystack; or wading 
through last year’s leaves and this year’s fern 
she would penetrate into a wood and burrow 
herself a bed. ( Satan going his rounds might 
come upon her and smile to see her lying so 
peaceful and secure in his dangerous keeping. 
But he would not disturb her. Why should 
het ‘The pursuit was over, as far as she was 
concerned. She could sleep where she pleased, 
a hind couched in the Devil’s coverts, a witch 
made free of her Master’s immunity; while he, 
wakeful and stealthy, was already out af ir 
new game. So he would not disturb her. A 
251 


LOLLY WILLOWES 
closer darkness upon her slumber, a deeper voice 
in the murmuring leaves overhead—that would 
be all she would know of his undesiring and 
unjudging gaze, his satisfied but profoundly in- 
different ownership. 


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